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brooklynboysficrecs · 4 years

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Ria’s Top 10 Shrinkyclinks Fics

I will admit this isn’t my preferred AU -- I won’t immediately jump on a fic just because it’s pre-serum Steve and WS Bucky. I gotta like the plot, or the premise, or be really, really intrigued by the tags, but to be fair, that’s how I am with everything that isn’t Modern Bucky and Cap Steve, so. That being said, I have read some truly fantastic shrinkyclinks stories, and I do very much love Steven “Fight Me” Rogers at his scrappiest. And these fics also tend to feature protective!Bucky which is another personal favorite of mine. Oh, but also: shrinkyclinks generally refers to pre-serum Steve with actual Winter Soldier Bucky, but a lot of people use the tag just to imply body types, and when they say WS Bucky they mean he’s all huge and muscled and sometimes has a metal arm, though that isn’t required. That’s the definition I’m going with as well, so hopefully nothing’s confusing!

1. If Wishing Made It So by leveragehunters. Before I get into anything about the actual fic, let me say this: leveragehunters is probably my favorite stucky writer. Like, hands-down, I read almost everything they write, and they’re big into fantasy stories, which is a great bonus for me personally. So, so, so many good shrinkyclinks fics by them (Even Underneath the Waves, a mermaid AU that features equal amounts of pre- and post-serum Steve, and A-mage-ing Grace with mage Steve are two of my other favorites, and they would’ve been on the list, but I try not to put more than one story per author, ya know? And IWMIS kinda wins out above the others for me, so). This story features jinn!Bucky who finds himself in the baffled hands of Steve Rogers, who is perfectly prickly and stubborn and good. Bucky’s got a terrible past with humans in general (and Hydra in particular, what a shocker) that he and Steve have to overcome as their relationship progresses, but that progression is frankly beautiful to watch unfold. I come back to this story time and time again because of how much I love these versions of Steve and Bucky getting to know one another, learning to trust each other, supporting each other through the worst the world has to throw at them. Plus, there’s a few more stories in this series if you get as hooked as I am, which is always great!!

2. Roots Have Grown by AustinB. I remember reading this and just... completely feeling what Bucky is going through. Not everything -- he’s an agoraphobic veteran, and I can’t relate to either of those, really, but he’s so... awkward about his crush on Steve. And that’s -- that’s relatable to me. But it’s precious, really, how he tries to help Steve even though he’s afraid to actually meet him initially; he becomes Steve’s sort of... anonymous benefactor? Guardian angel with money? Like, it’s definitely a sugar daddy type deal originally but I doubt Bucky would describe it like that. I don’t know, it’s cute, though, and I loved seeing Bucky opening up to Steve as they became closer.

3. Through The Woods by VenusMonstrosa, alby_mangroves. Okay, hear me out: werewolves. I fucking love werewolves in fiction; I mean, not really the romance novels you’ll see in the grocery store, but. Werewolf mythology is one of my favorite things, so seeing it in fanfiction almost always manages to lure me in. And I was so not disappointed with this story! Steve’s living alone in a cabin in the woods, which of course sounds like the opening to a horror movie, but here it leads to love. Werewolf Bucky is both charming and terrifying, to a degree, he’s a wolf, but he and Steve are fantastic together. This is another story that goes in on the trust aspect of their relationship and I for one am a big fan of that. There’s some violence, minor character death and the like, but it’s definitely not undeserved so. If you can handle that (and the sex, because there is sex in this) then I highly recommend this one!

4. The Joy of Little Things by obsessivereader, Sealcat. And so we move from werewolves to dragons. Yup. Dragons. Another of my beloved mythical creatures that I obsessed over when I was kid. Bucky’s capable of shifting into a human in this, but primarily he’s a big ol’ dragon that surprisingly doesn’t want to eat the scrawny sacrifice from the local village. Steve ends up working for Bucky, instead, and from there hilarity ensues. Steve’s obviously wary of Bucky, but Bucky isn’t at all what he’d been expecting, and they grow closer the longer Steve’s staying in Bucky’s caves. There are a couple of stories with Dragon!Bucky, but this is my personal favorite; it’s cute and heart-warming and, well. I just really like it.

5. I Just Want to Love You in My Own Language by agetwellcard, inediblesushi. So this one has Cap!Bucky (Bucky!Cap?) but again, sometimes it’s more about how Bucky looks rather than his role as the Winter Soldier. Anyway, I remember my biggest take away from this story was how adorable Bucky was in his quest to win the affections of sassy Nurse Steve, who patches him up after missions and is probably playing hard to get. Bucky uses terrible pick-up lines, absolutely awful, and he is completely unashamed of that fact. Which is, as I said, adorable. Steve, initially, does not agree with my assessment, but he gets there eventually. After some requisite drama, of course.

6. Tint & Shade by forestofbabel. Oh, god, this one hurt me, I remember that pretty clearly. Bucky is the Winter Soldier in this, and Steve is a 21st century art therapist who just so happens to resemble his late grandfather, Captain Joseph Rogers, who fought in -- you guessed it -- WWII. Like I said in the intro, if I really like the premise of something I’ll usually read it regardless of the configuration of pre-/post-serum Steve and pre-serum/WS Bucky, and this was definitely one of the fics I got into for that reason. Having actual WS Bucky interact with a modern pre-serum Steve is always interesting, given how much they don’t have in common, generally (there isn’t even really the veteran status that modern Bucky sometimes has in fics), and it’s a journey to see how and why they connect. Having Steve resemble his WWII era grandfather caught my attention, and the fic itself made me grateful that I decided to go for it in the first place. This is another one where is trust is key to their relationship, considering the mental/emotional state Bucky is in at the beginning. Very good story overall!

7. Fourth Floor by dirtybinary, mithborien, picoalloe. So dirtybinary has written some amazing stucky fics, which is why I was so excited when I saw this being posted initially (a few years ago, but still). There’s magic! Mystery! Suspense! Some NatSharon! Looking this over, I’m wondering if I should’ve saved it for the Urban Fantasy list I wanna do (and If Wishing Made It So, if I’m being honest) but I do like it for the shrinkyclinks list. The writing is great, the characterization of Steve and Bucky is great, and like, they live in what is essentially a magical apartment complex, so what’s better than that?

8. my heart tells me you are lonely, too by FanGirling. Alright, so I read this one as it was being published, and the slow burn about killed me. You know, in a good way, though. Bucky lives in Steve and his mother’s apartment building, trying to figure out where to go with his life now that he’s broken free of Hydra and gotten his autonomy back. He’s obviously wary, skittish, but he takes a liking to Sarah Rogers when she reaches out to befriend him, surprised anyone wants to be near him let alone take the time to get to know him. Steve... is not so easily sold on Bucky. And I’m not gonna spoil anything here, but the shit these two go through is intense, and I cried a lot during this fic, sometimes out of frustration because they’re both ridiculous about their feelings (of course Bucky’s fears are valid, the man has been through literal hell, but also I was internally screaming a little as Bucky continually talked himself out of getting closer to Steve.) I wanted to wrap the both of them in about thirty blankets for pretty much the entire length of the fic. God. They’re just -- they’re so incredibly sweet in this one, once they work past their issues (Bucky and Steve are both more than a little messed up from their respective circumstances, but they make it work). Mind the tags on this one, also, especially because there is a chapter that deals with attempted sexual assault against Steve (obviously not with Bucky!), but Bucky handles the situation before anything truly nasty happens, that I can promise.

9. Local Raccoon Befriends Angry Chihuahua by charlesdk. This is yet another author I really love; they have a fantastic farmer!Steve/Modern!WS!Bucky story that I love to bits, as well as other great fics. But anyway, this one. The title sold me the second I saw it, honestly, I can’t even pretend that wasn’t the deciding factor in me reading this. I don’t think I can really do any better than the summary in explaining why I recommend it; feisty tiny Steve and lovestruck grumpy Bucky are a winning combination in my book. This one does feature the boys dealing with homophobia and ableism, though I can’t recall how severe it is. So I’d just mind the tags, and if you’re alright with them, thoroughly enjoy this story.

10. The Road to Hell is Paved with Tony’s Good Intentions by pinlilli. Bucky as a mail-order Russian bride. That’s the detail that pretty much demanded I click on this fic, and oh my god, it was even better than I ever could’ve expected. Tony, in a bid to help Steve get over his awful ex-boyfriend (fuck Brock Rumlow in every universe, honestly), literally orders him a husband -- in the form of beefy James Barnes, who is a fucking gem and I will not hear one bad word against him. He does chores, it’s lovely and adorable, and you will definitely fall just as hard as Steve does. There’s some canon-typical violence in this one that relates to James’ past, but nothing super graphic as far as I remember. Again, Rumlow is a dick and should be treated as such, but he’s hardly the most important part of this fic and I urge everyone to take a look at it if they’re as intrigued by Bucky being a mail-order husband as I was.

#stucky #stevebucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #captain america #winter soldier #chris evans #sebastian stan #fic rec #shrinkyclinks #top 10

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kaimactrash · 3 years

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Okay first and foremost: if this flag is wrong lemme know! I have been googling but obviously, it can only go so far in trustablity since pages can be boosted.Anyway, heres my crew of lesbian OCs,

realise I have very few gay men ocs bc I've been in a real drawing fems mood lately, but theres a few there

info below on the ocs

other than Lith none of these women were born on earth, or even lived on it, so they don't have the exact same gender and physical sex rules we do, so this is more the closest term that fits all of my ladies who love ladies&enbees.up in the top left we have Lottie, she's not really into sex that much, but shes all about the romance, shes a very loving person, but deeply scared from several events leaving her with intense PTSD. She's a Frenrar native would was recruited as a demon, she was much more anthro as a human, but lost some of it on the transition to demon. She starts her story being rescued, while greatful, within a few months of world trecking she realised that this isn't what she wants to do anymore, she decides to hang out at Valentino, Skye, and Pipers traveling bar, called The Turkeys Tail. There she studies endlessly to solve a few magic issues on Franrar with the help of Valentino, it takes time but she ends up being the demon to be able to break the Elders curse, in the form of cuffs binding all lower (Hokey) demons, which prevents them running of flying away. She's a pacifist & would really like if there were no wars going on, but since she can't stop them herself, she tries to do so with her experiments. She's growing a lot as i write her and get to know her which is cool, I love when you can just almost hear a character coming together in your mind. all the inspo! Sorry for the ramble! it's good to get this stuff down when I'm in brain storming mind! Across from Lottie, top right, is lith! If you've followed me for years you know lith a bit, she was once a middle aged woman from earth, she made the transition over to demon at the end of a long fight with respiritory illness. Shes very busy lady being one of the two first primary protagonists, while she has some time to adjust to demon life, it didn't come with its own issues, and she ws soon through into a resistance for a place she arrived in not that long ago, she works it out over time. She also works out her sexuality, as a human, she pretty much burried her sexuality but the freedom of a while new world, one filled with many more queer people like her, haha.below her the giant elder Galo stands, due to her bullish attitude and hard headed focus, she struggles with this and the power battles in the Demon realm, often failing to see the wider issue as rilo refocuses her everytime she get close to figuring them out. Shes a bit new so a little under developed but shes going to be apearing quite a lot at the start of the story, then return later, so I'll have some time to get to know her. that tiny lil green triclops like thing, is Shihosu, my most precious and special baby, I wanna protect her even thou i'm the one writting the conflict in her world. She actually dies before she even apears, but shes brough back by octo ( the gold and purple octomaid lady.) and this essentially makes her speicies see her as some blessed chosen one, she has a big repuatation and after seeing and hearing other members of her speices die, she goes on the hunt for octo to find out why she was chosen...she has plenty of fun nights out during this, so she has a good life work balance. Shihosu is checking out Elviras butt. Elvira is basically an effigy brought to life by her father Emesh, She's a romantic at heart and can't help but coo and awe at any acts of love. Her father is very over protective and it takes a long time for her to be given true free reign of her life, shes thousands of years old by that point, so she gets out and finds the area outside her home is a semi-apocolyptic waste land filled with strange speicies and creatures, she quick decides she has left because she's to help. Her father is actually aware that he was to let her go off on her own as soon as she'd ask. He was inspired to create her while tripping hard, and the voice told him how to make her, and why he should....*mystery music.*Lastly we have the aforementioned Octo, and her wife, Beefy. By the time we meet them, they've been married a few years and they are obnoxiously in love. Beefy was earth child some how snatched onto Frenrar, she doesn'y know who did it, why, or even how, even though she meets others like her over time, none of them seem to know who did this, and no one on frenrar seems to know who could even do that. She was found in a box in the woods, no older than a year, and the Fleetfoots, a rabbit like spieces with multiple varients across frenrar, the spieces are known for strength, mentally and phsyically, hardiness, and determination, which ended up feeling perfect for Beefy, until Octovar arrived, Not immediately though. Octo was there over a summer at her father request, as she had gained a reputation for making scenes at big public royal family events, so as it is so oftem the rebelious princess is sent off out of daddys way, while he does his old boring bussiness. Beefy spent a lot of her time building and training physically, and Octovar would often be around. She's very curious as someone who lives mostly in the sea, being so far from the ocean, the lifestyles felt completely alien to one another. Over time awkward stares and little comments evolved in to longing looks and full on flirting. Always very opinionated, Octovar opened up to beefy about why she was here, why she was fighting them, and why she needed to leave before her father came back to collect her, Beefy agreed and talked about a Fleetfoot called Piper who had been here, but left after a visit from a powerful mage, beefy had kept contact via letters, so was now aware, Piper was an active member of the resistance. Beefy said her goodbyes, their culture never saw one set of parents, everyone raised everyone basically, so it was scary, but the elders reccomended beefy go try it out, reminding her, her burrow will always be there for her when or if she ever comes back.While we meet them at wives I'm 100% planning a prequel comic on them from meeting each other, to when they meet lith landon and the crew.OOf woops sorry these are meant to be silly cute lil pieces but I get all focused on lore! I'm still planningon doing more even though pride is over, I'm planning on doing one with gay men, then aro/ace. I may also do one with other mspec idnetities, but I do not have many ocs in those categories, YET! I will defo have more as more characters are created, I gotta make a whole planet of people. so theres gonna be variety.I may try and put all my trans characters together for a trans flag, but i may use the art I already made of them! Happy pride Lesbains*! (*and all the groups simailir or under that lable)

#kai art #oc art

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danceworshipper · 4 years

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Gracie Chiva - HPHM Profile [Redone]

(information is as of sixth year - same universe as Tessa and River)

Identity

Name: Gracie Tessa Chiva

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Birthday: August 17th, 1973 at 3:28 am (leo)

Species: Human/Witch with altered DNA

Blood Status: Pureblood

Sexuality: Bisexual

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Ethnicity: White - German, English

Nationality: British

Residence: Chiva Manor, a heavily warded house in the wizarding part of the English countryside

Personality Type: ISFJ-T (the defender)

The Mage

Wand: 13 3/4 inches of rowan wood encasing a unicorn tail hair core, reasonably supple. The wand is a light color with intricate carvings on the handle and a small peridot sticking out of the front end. This is her only wand, as if her wand breaks she will die immediately. A few different people have put protective spells on it - the peridot is one of them, from Ollivander himself

Animagus: Osprey

Misc. Magical Abilities: Legilimens, very strong. Her Occlumency isn't as strong as it could be, but it's much stronger than Tessa's

Boggart Form: Tessa covered in bloody gashes, gagging and clearly dying

Riddikulus Form: the blood turning into fruit punch while Tessa whines about her shirt being stained

Amortentia (how she smells): Gracie would smell like citrus, poison, and strong wind

Amortentia (what she smells): She smells a mixture of pine trees, spearmint gum, and puffskein fur (Merula)

Patronus: Unicorn

Patronus Memory: the first time she and Tessa were ever allowed to go wandering in the woods on their own. They found a creek and spent the afternoon barefoot, eating berries and splashing each other

Mirror of Erised: Herself, truly happy and looking like she was never cursed

Specialized/Favorite Spells:

- Accio

- Crucio

- Sanguinem Non (stops bleeding, however intense)

- Depulso

- Gelida

Appearance

(picture made using the zepeto app)

Height: 5'6"

Weight: 118lbs

Physique: Skinny, slightly thinner waist than Tessa. Her strength comes more from magical ability than actual muscles

Eye Color: Unnaturally green

Hair Color: Bright white

Skin Tone: Deathly pale, has barely noticeable freckles around her nose

Body Modifications: Two piercings in each earlobe and a cartilage piercing in her left ear

Scarring: Small scars on knees from various childhood injuries, a thin line around her ankle from getting caught in a rope, and a small line on her right middle finger from a cooking incident

Inventory:

- Her wand, either gripped tightly in her hand or tucked in her waistband

- Her pocket knife, hidden in her robes/shorts

- About twenty Galleons

- An icy blue cracked marble to fidget with

Fashion: Gracie likes to look good, but also likes to be comfy. When not in her uniform, she's most likely wearing a thin sweater/shirt depending on the weather, and black skinny jeans or shorts. She frequently wears black fishnet tights, and black heeled ankle boots. Her hair is usually worn down. As for jewelry, she has a necklace with a gold key that unlocks a box full of Vance's childhood memories that he hid for her before he disappeared, mostly of the two of them. She also wears large gold hoops in each of the two piercings, and a gold stud in her cartilage. Makeup-wise she wears dark red lipstick, blush, and heavy dark eyeshadow and mascara. If she hadn't been cursed she might not wear any makeup at all, but as it is, she's insecure about how pale she is and wants to bring some color back to her face

Allegiances

Hogwarts House: Slytherin

Affiliations/Organizations:

- Chiva Family

- Black Family

- R (seventh year)

Professions:

- Current student

- Future Dark Arts Professor at Durmstrang

- Future author

Hogwarts Information

Class Grades:

- Arithmancy: E

- Astronomy: O

- Care of Magical Creatures: O

- Charms: E

- Defense Against the Dark Arts: O

- Flying: O

- Herbology: E

- History of Magic: E

- Potions: O

- Transfiguration: O

Quidditch: Knows how to play, but is not on the team

Extracurriculars:

- Potions Club

- Dueling Club

- Tutor for a few select first year Slytherins, including Aiden

Favorite Professors:

- Professor McGonagall: Despite not being her Head of House, Gracie would much rather turn to McGonagall for advice than Snape. She appreciates McGonagall's teaching style, and her relative lack of prejudice about house/upbringing

- Madam Hooch: When Gracie was first cursed, Madam Hooch was the one to help her calm down and start to accept her changed appearance. Hooch's yellow eyes and whiteish hair are not common either, so the similarities and Hooch's successful life helped Gracie see that she would be okay

Least Favorite Professors:

- Professor Snape: Gracie has never liked her Head of House. Snape is cruel to many of her classmates, grades based on his own opinion of the student, and makes learning in the classroom nearly impossible

- Professor Dumbledore: In the beginning, she didn't mind him, but as the years went on and he proved to be more and more useless during dangerous times, Gracie lost all respect for him. The final straw was when he told her that none of this would have happened if she had left it alone, because she knew that this wasn't her fault and if not for her people would be dead (Redacted's death doesn't happen in my canon)

Relationships

Twin Sister: Tessa Gracie Chiva

- Tessa is younger by eight and a half minutes

- Despite them being the same age, Gracie feels much older and more mature than her sister

- Tessa quit everything to do with the vaults after defeating the second one in third year, so she hasn't seen the horrors that Gracie has

- As such, Gracie feels extremely protective to her sister and tries to always keep her safe, far away from any danger. This is part of why she runs away in seventh year

- Gracie hasn't told Tessa about her crazes and unnatural sadistic urges yet. Tessa finds out a little information shortly before Gracie disappears

- Gracie loves her sister more than anyone else. When they fight, she's always the first one to start crying. She would do anything to protect Tessa, whether it be suffer immense torture, die, anything

- She's also jealous of Tessa's relative innocence

Older Brother: Vance Riley Chiva

- He's five years older than the twins

- As a little girl, Gracie worshipped Vance. He was older and cool, and he spoiled her

- The news of Vance's disappearance shattered her heart, and when she found the key, she spent hours going through all of the memories using her mother's pensieve

- Gracie's main motivation to start looking for the vaults was to find Vance. After finding him and seeing how different he was, she stopped caring about him and only continued to protect Tessa and her friends

- The first spell Gracie learned outside of class was the sticking charm, which she used to stick the clasp of her necklace to the back of her neck. She doesn't undo the spell until the very end of sixth year, when she loses all hope of getting her brother back

- The love she once felt turns to hate fast, but she can't bring herself to throw the key away, so she gives it to Tessa

Younger Cousin: Aiden Carter Darkling

- Aiden is the son of Rachel Chiva, Jason's sister. Rachel and Aiden's father divorced while he was still young, but it was relatively amicable and he comes around for holidays

- Gracie tutors Aiden and a couple of his friends in Potions

- She's always had a liking for the kid. She sees a bit of herself in him, from before she was lost to the vaults

- They aren't the closest, but other than (some of) her immediate family, Aiden is the only family member Gracie doesn't hate

Mother: Clarissa Vanessa Black

- Clarissa passed on her Legilimency to her children

- Gracie's relationship with her mother is strained these days

- They're actually closer than they used to be, with Gracie's favorite parent having been her father as a kid

- Clarissa legally separates from Jason after his arrest, and once she's wiped her hands of him, she and Gracie get closer

- Gracie knows about her mother's girlfriend. Clarissa's upbringing made her too afraid to ever come out, but she's bisexual and began dating her childhood friend Margaret (again) after Jason was arrested

- Gracie also knows that Margaret's husband didn't die of illness, but she never tells anyone that Margaret poisoned him because she had good reason to

- The silent acknowledgement of "I know about you and you know I know but we won't mention it" is the main sense of closeness she and her mother have

- They'll never be as close as they should be, but Gracie does love her mother and her mother does love her

Father: Jason Harvey Chiva

- Similarly to Vance, Gracie loved her father a lot as a kid and looked up to him

- He was an Auror, and a good one. She would beg to visit his office with him and learn about cases

- Despite being pureblood and approving of the Death Eaters, Jason was loving toward his children and never brought up his past

- Jason began acting strangely after she was cursed, but Gracie ignored it

- All the love Gracie felt for her father vanished the day she watched him murder their family friend, a week before she turned thirteen

- After turning him in to his Auror partner, Thomas, they discovered that Jason had killed eleven people in his search to find out who cursed his daughter

- Thus began Gracie's horrible trust issues. Even Vance hadn't ruined her ability to trust completely, but after her father the only two options were trust completely, or not trust at all. Gracie has never trusted another authority figure since (and also has major daddy issues)

- Gracie kills Jason when he escapes from his transfer (she's twenty two). She hates herself for it, but not because it was her father - he deserved it. She's upset that she broke her promise to never kill anyone again after Rakepick (even though both were totally justified - Jason tried to kill Margaret and Rakepick tried to kill most of her friends)

Love Interest: Merula Snyde

- In first year Gracie hated Merula. Merula was mean to Gracie's new friends and was boastful about being the best even though she clearly wasn't, and it was obnoxious having to share a dorm with her

- In second year it gets a bit worse, but then it gets a bit better too. It gets to the point where they don't hate each other and can coexist peacefully, but they still dislike each other

- Then third year starts

- Gracie gets off the train, grabs her stuff, starts heading for the castle, and bumps into Merula

- Merula snaps at her

- Instead of being annoyed, however, Gracie is frozen staring into Merula's eyes with a jolt in her heart

- Well, shit

- Gracie spends that whole year conflicted about if it was actually a crush, or if it was just strange feelings from a strange situation, and eventually lands on being bisexual and indeed having a crush on this girl she used to hate.

- She knows she's bisexual and not a lesbian because she had a small crush on one of the boys in her neighborhood, but that fades pretty quickly after getting back to school

- In fourth year, it starts becoming more apparent that Merula shares her feelings

- Gracie takes a risk and asks her to the Celestial Ball, and Merula says yes

- She and Merula had a lot of fun at the ball, and Gracie's heart nearly exploded during the slow dance

- A week later, Rowan is pissed with the pining and rants about it to Ismelda of all people, who then tells Merula to ask Gracie out before she gets murdered

- Merula does, very hesitantly, and they have their first proper date a few days later. It's awkward and they're scared, but once they open up it's easy to tell everything is mutual

- They have their first kiss that summer while Merula is visiting Gracie

- Fifth year, the night before going into the Portrait Vault, Gracie and Merula are awake, terrified that they'll die the next day

- An impulsive decision leads them to the Room of Requirement (Tessa had found it by accident the year before) and they lose their virginity together

- They don't die, and surviving together brings them closer

- Sixth year problems arise

- Merula is losing her mind, trying to be independent and refusing to be at all affectionate in public, but still clinging to Gracie at night with nightmares

- Gracie also wants Rakepick's head to rot on a stake, but Merula is letting her anger control her and Gracie doesn't know how to help her

- When Gracie runs away in seventh year, Merula will go insane

- When Gracie comes back, Merula will punch her in the face and then hold her close and not let go for over an hour

Best Friend: Rowan Khanna

- Gracie met Rowan in Ollivander's. Rowan walked in just as Ollivander told Gracie her wand wood and Rowan excitedly declared that they had to be best friends

- Being young and relatively sheltered, Gracie said alright because she didn't know how friends really worked

- They did become very close pretty quickly

- They wrote each other letters every day until school started

- Rowan is the only one to know the full extent of Gracie's curse, because she forced it out of her

- Rowan can be pretty scary when she wants to be

- They both know things about the other that no one else does, and they can (and have) talked about everything, even extremely uncomfortable subjects

- Gracie is almost scared by Rowan's level of loyalty, but tries to show her the same

- Gracie mentioned being terrified to be cornered by Rakepick or someone else, so Rowan didn't leave her side at all for a week

- The next time Rowan said something about being afraid, Gracie did the same thing

- Rowan made Gracie teach her the blood healing spell in case Gracie ever can't come back from a craze in time

- The two of them are so close Merula was at one point pretty jealous, but she can recognize that they're just very close friends

Rival: Olivia Green

- The first time Gracie heard of Olivia was when Vance complained about her dating Duncan

- After learning about the vaults and Olivia's involvement with Vance and Duncan, Gracie was determined to find out what happened to her. It takes until seventh year to find out

- (this could all change depending on where Jam City takes the story, but this is where I'm going for now)

- Olivia joined R a year before Duncan died, two years before Vance got trapped in the Portrait. She knew how bad they were, but R was the only place she felt she could grow her power and protect what little she had left, so she faked her own death in order to not be caught by any professors or other authority

- Neither Vance nor Duncan know she's alive

- Over the years Olivia grew cold and ruthless, but she still has a small soft spot for her old friends

- Gracie tries to hate Olivia for everything she's done, but can't help but agree with her reasoning

- Olivia is the one who convinces Gracie to join up with R in seventh year, which is when they end up becoming good friends instead of rivals

School Rival: Diego Caplan

- Gracie hates this boy with everything she has

- He's a flirt with no shame and an ego stretching for miles

- Every time he duels her she makes sure to kick his ass extra hard

- She really doesn't like that he and Tessa are good friends because she thinks he has ulterior motives (he used to, but not anymore)

Enemy: Patricia Rakepick

- Gracie's lack of trust/respect for authority means that Rakepick being brought in for the vaults felt like a direct threat to her. As Rakepick recruited her, Bill, and Merula, Gracie tried to play nice but it's clear she hates the woman

- It's likely that if Bill hadn't knocked her wand out of her hand, Gracie would have killed Rakepick in the Portrait Vault

- It wasn't a craze. She was just furious

- Gracie is as determined as Merula to kill Rakepick (stupid canon mc too weak to murder)

- Joining R will be uncomfortable at first, because Rakepick will taunt her, but they'll learn to work together

- No matter how the game goes, Gracie's adventure with the vaults will end in killing Rakepick

Dormmates:

- Tessa Chiva

- Rowan Khanna

- Merula Snyde

- Ismelda Murk: they could be considered friends, but they aren't as close as they could be

- Liz Tuttle: Liz was close to both of the twins at first, but now is way closer to Tessa

Pets:

- Ruby, the family Crup

- Clara, Vance's toad

- Elaura, an owl

- Lemmy, a moke (he's more Tessa's pet really)

- a bunch of creatures in the Reserve that Tessa and Liz coparent, and Gracie tags along sometimes

Closest Canon Friends:

- Jae Kim: a year of spending hours together everyday will do wonders for a friendship

- Penny Haywood: they've been drifting apart, but they spend a lot of time together in the Potions Club

- Charlie Weasley: they were partnered for a Charms project in year two and kept hanging out all the time after it was done

- Olivia Green (while in R)

Closest Non-Canon Friends:

- Tessa Chiva (technically not canon because mc has no siblings besides the Jacob character)

- Rosalie Sonnenschein: a German model who is one year older and attends Durmstrang. First generation part Veela with a very strong natural allure, which she trains Gracie to resist once it becomes apparent that she's affected

- Justin Freed (while in R): a young man one year older than Olivia. He's mean but he's funny, and he helps Gracie get adjusted to the whole group. He's a bit too egotistical and slightly overprotective over Olivia and Gracie as younger women, even though they're both fully capable (and stronger than him)

(Storyline has to be in a different post because of tumblr's dumb text limit)

Future

Marriage and Children: Before the wedding, Gracie timidly approaches Margaret, who married Clarissa two years prior, and asks if they can take her name since neither Gracie nor Merula want to be associated with their fathers anymore. Margaret tears up and tells her of course they can. Gracie gets married to Merula at age twenty five, becoming Gracie and Merula Miller. They get married on a beach, with ice cream cake instead of traditional wedding cake. Penny calls them up one day with the news that she's been working on a potion to allow a woman to become pregnant from another woman and asks them if they'd like to test it. At age twenty six, Gracie nearly passes out watching Merula give birth to their oldest daughter, Destiny. Three years later their second daughter, Dahlia, is born

Career: Gracie becomes the Dark Arts professor at Durmstrang at age twenty three. She's mocked by the other professors for being young and inexperienced, but after she kicks one of their asses in a duel they back off. She's a talented professor, and her curse actually allows her to be a test dummy of sorts for her students so that they're able to learn both from the book and from experience. After marrying Merula they move to Germany to be near Gracie's family, so she ends up being very talented at Apparation

The Second Wizarding War:

- Gracie is out of the country when the war happens, and only returns when she gets word of Bill's attack, leaving Merula and the kids in Germany to be safe (and avoid risking Merula run into her parents, because Gracie knows that Merula would try and duel them)

- She does not participate in the Battle of Hogwarts because if she did, she knew Tessa would too and couldn't risk her sister getting hurt

- She's horrified to discover that Olivia and Justin were some of the people who escaped Azkaban, but relieved that neither of them were spotted in the battle. Olivia shows up on Gracie's doorstep the day after the battle and begs Gracie to forgive her for everything, including killing Justin when he tried to join the Death Eaters. Gracie forgives her, and uses her Legilimency to figure out the best way to get Olivia out of her jail sentence

- Merula hates Olivia quite a bit when she realizes that this Olivia is the one in R (not because she was in R, but because she and Gracie hooked up a few times while they were there together), but is able to get along with her - especially when Olivia takes a great interest in Rosalie

Old Age and Death:

- Gracie dies at the age of one hundred and seventeen from natural causes. After her death, her wand snaps in half by itself

Personality

- Major introvert

- Craves touch, but won't ask for it unless she's super close with the person she wants it from

- Tries to think logically whenever possible

- Might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie

- When she gets upset, making her laugh is the best option

- Sentimental as all hell, borderlining on being a hoarder

- Prefers animals to humans most of the time

Misc Information

- Gracie is bilingual, fluent in both English and German

- She can play cello. She can also sing, but doesn't like doing it in front of other people

- Gracie's misophonia developed around age nine, but didn't start becoming a real issue until the anxiety and depression joined in at age eleven

- By the time Gracie meets Fleur, she's so good at blocking out Rosalie's allure that she doesn't even notice Fleur's. Speaking of Rosalie, she and Olivia do end up marrying

- Gracie nearly kills Tessa the first time a craze is strong enough to target a family member. Tessa falls off of a small cliff and ends up in a coma the day Gracie joins R

- Gracie doesn't find out about it until the next time she actually sees Tessa months later because the craze was strong enough to disorient her, and oh boy does she hate herself when she finds out

- Gracie never officially broke up with Merula when she joined R, but wrongly assumed she would find someone else. Gracie casually hooked up with a couple people in the meantime, including Olivia

- Olivia gives Gracie an amethyst necklace a few months after she joins R, and Gracie charms that one in place instead of Vance's

- Part of why Olivia was able to convince Gracie to join R was because Gracie had recently failed suicide and was desperate to find a way to get R away from Tessa and her friends. If she couldn't die (and get them to stop targeting her friends to get to her, was the faulty reasoning), she might as well join them and be able to warn her loved ones of upcoming attacks

- Vance jumps in front of Tessa during the last fight with R and dies without saying goodbye, which messes both of the twins up for a while

- Gracie's interest in being a professor stemmed from Rowan's. Rowan became Head Girl :) and lived a long happy life as a professor :))))))))

- Rowan also smacked Gracie when she came back from R, which is fair

- Gracie's favorite muggle thing is orange soda

- Gracie likes pineapple pizza

- She has a sweet tooth, but she really likes sour candy as well

- Her favorite color is blue and she feels like it's a betrayal to her house

- Gracie is forever a dog person because of Ruby. She had previously been a cat person

- She writes a lot of poems as she gets older, and eventually tries out creative writing. She loves it and publishes a few books

- Everyone in her immediate family is left handed besides her father

- Her natural body temperature is a few degrees lower than a normal human's. As such, she sweats more and is always warm to the touch (I don't think it makes sense, but that's how it works for me so...)

- She's obsessed with night. She loves being outside at night, looking at the stars when the air is slightly cooler and feeling alone and insignificant in the universe (it comforts her to know she doesn't matter - it's the depression talking)

- Loves thunderstorms

- Believes in aliens 100%

#hogwarts mystery #gracie chiva #character profile #hphm mc #zepeto

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blackwxtchmccree · 6 years

Text

Can also be found on my AO3 >>> here

Unexpected part 3 of scars because tbh it’s okay for men to cry and Damien is here remind everyone of that fact.

Warnings: a previously homophobic father apologizing, men crying, Dorian comforting the Inquisitor -Valk

They rode in silence, Damien keeping his gaze straight ahead, eyes locked on the well worn dirt path ahead as it raced by underneath them.

‘ You’re a spitting image of your father ,’ they always said.

It made him flinch. That’s not what he wanted.

“ This isn’t how it was supposed to be .”

His mother’s word echoed in his head and it made his chest hurt, the look on her face when he told her his sister’s—her only daughter’s fate was burned into his mind.

She had taken care of him like any mother would, dabbing at his bleeding forehead gently and cooing calming encouragements through sobs, but he couldn’t look her in the eyes anymore—tired blue eyes that had looked like Elizabeth’s moments before she had died. He kept seeing his sister in his nightmares—waking up in a jolt covered in a cold sweat as he reached for her desperately before a holy sword had splattered her blood on the street below them.

He’d get up and pick up a sword every time after, heading deep into the forests surrounding their estate to find a wolf or a bear to fight, unable and unwilling to fall back asleep—fearing he would keep seeing her reach for him. Each clawmark and gash he received reminded him that he was still alive—reminded him who was to blame and the pain that lit up his nerves convinced him he deserved it. The sting of the sweat on his forehead as it dripped into his wound reminded him he couldn’t protect her and it broke his heart.

His father had called him pathetic when he returned a few days later—outraged that the son he had so painstakingly trained was unable to protect his own sister. Damien was inclined to agree, but he didn’t say so out loud. His mother had stayed silent, staring off into the adjacent room, barely able to hear over her own grief. They had decided to leave her in peace, taking their subsequent fight elsewhere, finding themselves racing through the forests that encompassed the Trevelyan estate. Damien kept pulling ahead of his father, unable to look at him, either.

“Alex and I are engaged.”

The words came out of his mouth in a flurry—he figured if he was going to continue being a disappointment, he might as well get everything on the table. It had happened weeks ago on his trip with Alex to Rivain, but Damien had kept his silence, too apprehensive to reveal their engagement just yet. Now was as good a time as any.

The sound of a second horse’s hooves on pine needles and dirt slowed to a stop and Damien pulled on the reigns, slowing his own horse to a halt, angling the dappled mare back so he could look at his father. Bann Trevelyan gazed at his son, his green eyes narrowing and a frown on his face, his greying auburn hair falling over his forehead. The dead silent pause that followed made Damien realize his heart was racing.

“You’re not the son I raised.”

The words didn’t cut as deeply as Damien expected. They were less scathing than he had been anticipating and he held firm in his opposition, his brow furrowing in exasperation.

“What do you want fro—,” but the elder Trevelyan didn’t let his son finish, shaking his head in disapproval—a motion Damien had gotten used to over the years.

“All I ever asked of you was for you to listen to me, but you even struggle with that,” his father interrupted, his gaze heavy and his grip on the reins tight. “We’re the laughing stock of the family all because you couldn’t pretend to love the girl. Now your sister is dead—I trained you to protect your family, not stand by stunned like a scared halla.”

“I tried protecting her. I tried convincing her to stay out of it,” Damien replied, trying to keep his voice from wavering. “But you know— knew her and she was as stubborn as any of us. I’m sorry I couldn’t get to her fast enough—I’ll probably regret that for the rest of my life. I’m sure you would have been more content with the outcome if I had died instead.”

“That outcome would have certainly been more ideal,” his father snarled in return, though Damien noted that his tone made the insult seem half-hearted. “Then I wouldn’t have to worry about explaining where your sister is and why you’re still up and running around with another man. It was hard enough explaining to the du Marquets why you rejected their daughter. Now I have to tell them their son doesn’t have a wife, either.”

“She hated him, anyway. If you thought she actually would have agreed you’re a fool,” Damien retorted, trying to keep his voice from rising. “You wouldn’t know that, though—you’ve never bothered to ask how we feel about any decision you’ve ever made for us for most of our lives.”

“Every decision I’ve made for you was to make sure you had the easiest life I could give you. You just had to listen or at least see what was at stake.”

“I’m not blind nor am I a fool. If you think our family’s reputation is more important than your own children’s happiness I don’t know what to tell you except I’ll be damned if I spend the rest of my life miserable because you can’t accept that things just won’t work out how you planned.”

“All you had to do was marry the girl we chose and protect your sister like I told you to. It was that easy, but I suppose fucking up easy tasks are all weak men are good for.”

That stung and Damien lowered his head, his eyes finally falling closed in defeat. Tears pricked the edges of his eyes, but the younger Trevelyan forced them back, taking in a shaky breath before looking up to meet his father’s gaze. It was stone cold and Damien knew he’d never find the right words—it was unlikely anything he said or did would make anything any easier.

He decided to just tug at the reins in his hands instead, urging the horse underneath him to turn around again and move, quickly . She went from a trot to a swift gallop as quickly as Damien could get her to, putting more and more space between himself and his father.

If that’s what he thinks, so be it.

But that mentality didn’t keep the guilt from eating away at him.

It tugged at his subconscious in his sleep, danced through his head every time he pulled Alex closer, and finally tore at his sanity when he met Dorian—when that familiar feeling bubbled up in his chest. Every time he found himself being dragged down to meet Dorian’s lips, he admitted to himself he was weak— oh so weakand he had to push the image of his sister aside when their tongues tangled, his father’s words echoing in his head. Damien just wanted him to be proud—a task he should have realized was impossible far sooner, but it was too late by then.

The memory was somehow more potent now that Damien hadn’t spoken to his father in over a year and a half. He had just received a letter from his mother begging for him to come home—his father was sick and she didn’t know if he would make it. He didn’t know how to feel, kicking his booted feet up onto his desk and sitting back, his thumb idly playing with the corner of the parchment as he scanned his mother’s handwriting.

On one hand, his tattered self esteem and the scars on his thighs and wrists were the result of his father’s poor parenting—the ginger couldn’t deny that. On the other, it was his father—the man who had taught him how to use a sword and to ride a horse among many other things. The man whose approval Damien had been seeking for all 26 years of his life. The Inquisitor also didn’t want to leave his mother to grieve alone should his father pass.

“Keep staring at that paper any longer and it will burst into flames,” Dorian’s voice drew Damien out of his head and the warrior looked up as the Tevinter scion let himself in, Dorian’s brown eyes glowing almost golden in the light of the setting sun. “What’s on your mind?”

Rather than explain, Damien handed the mage the letter, scanning Dorian’s face as he read the text, unable to keep a small smile from creeping onto his face as he watched Dorian’s expressions change with some amusement. Once the mage had finished, he looked up at the ginger, handing the letter back to him. Damien set it to the side, running his hands tiredly down his face before crossing his arms behind his head.

“This all seems rather familiar.”

“Which part? The daddy issues, the letter writing, or the request for reconciliation,” Damien quipped sarcastically in return. “...I don’t know what to do.”

“No decision worth making is easy, mind you,” Dorian replied, extending a hand and beckoning for the Inquisitor to stand—the mage knew he had likely been sitting at his desk all day. “After everything he’s said and done, I wouldn’t mark going as a requirement.”

“But If I go, would you mind accompanying me?”

“And miss out on Ostwick wine and cheese? Perish the thought,” Dorian replied with a small smile. “Wherever you need me, amatus, I’m there.”

That word—it made that bubbly feeling rise up in Damien’s chest again, and as usual, the feeling was chased by the memory of his father’s disappointment. He pushed it down again like he always did, smiling and running a gentle, battleworn hand through Dorian’s dark hair before pulling the mage against him, stealing his lips. Dorian was quick to hum in approval, a sound that made Damien realize he was still oh so weak and he could make peace with that for the moment.

“He’s my father. I can’t… not go.” Dorian took note of the hesitant edge in his voice, but nodded anyway.

“I know,” Dorian replied, gently nosing Damien’s cheek affectionately, making the warrior’s heart flutter. “No need to explain. You may recall I’m rather well versed in the matter of difficult fathers.”

That made Damien chuckle, wrapping his arms around the mage and pulling him against his chest. Dorian was quick to grow comfortable, always grateful to be in the warrior’s arms, a chill running through his body when Damien pressed a kiss to his hair. There was a small pause, neither of them willing to let the other go.

“Alright—I have to write orders. I’ll have Cullen move Inquisition soldiers into the Emerald Graves while we’re gone. I’ll ask Josephine to find a ship out of Jader to Ostwick within the next few days…"

There it was. He sounded more like the Inquisitor and less like Damien again and Dorian couldn’t help, but smile. He was one of the few who knew the difference—had experienced the difference. He wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but he felt almost privileged that the warrior had opened up to him at all, much more so since the Inquisitor had asked him to come with him to Ostwick. It’s the least he could do—Damien had accompanied him in dealing with his own family matters.

“...Pack light. We need to move fast.”

Dorian nodded in acknowledgement, tuning back into the conversation, reluctantly relinquishing his place in Damien’s arms to head back to his own room. Damien was loathe to let him go, but knew he had to start on his own agenda, watching Dorian leave reverently. The Inquisitor took a deep, shaky breath, glancing at the open letter one last time before finally making peace with his decision, moving to start checking things off of his mental list.

They left by midnight, with the Inquisitor having given out his respective orders to be carried out in his absence. Damien climbed up onto his ebony mare at the gate, glancing over his shoulder as Dorian did the same to his right, the mage urging his silver mare forward to stand beside Damien’s horse.

“Ready?” Damien knew the Tevinter scion was—it was more of a confirmation to himself that he was sure of his own decision.

“No—wait. I’m meeting your parents and I didn’t have time to trim my mustache,” Dorian deadpanned, eyeing the Inquisitor mischievously. “I have to make the best possible impression and I can’t do that while looking like the southerner I’m not.”

“So, you’re finally admitting we’ve rubbed off on you a bit,” Damien snorted in reply, shaking his head and urging his horse forward out of the gate and onto the moonlit trail. Dorian followed at his side, their horses hooves crunching in the fresh snow.

“I can’t speak for the rest of Fereldan, but I know you have.”

“ Oh you’ll get along with my mother just fine,” Damien groaned in return, rolling his eyes, but he couldn’t hide the smile on his face. “Let’s go.”

The Inquisitor set a quick pace, pushing their horses as fast as he could without exhausting them too quickly. In doing so, they made good time—riding straight through the Frostback Mountains and out over the foothill roads that led into Jader, making it to the port city in three and a half days. Dorian had never seen Damien so focused, but even in the silent moments of the nights they spent either holed up in some obscure inn or in an Inquisition camp, Dorian could see the conflicting emotions Damien was feeling in his emerald eyes. When Damien took his hand on the ship as they crossed the Waking Sea, the ginger was shaking and Dorian gave his hand a small comforting squeeze—a silent reminder to breathe .

Once they reached the opposing coast 3 days later—the winds having favored them out on the open water, the ride to the Trevelyan estate, located just outside of Ostwick, took another half a day, putting their arrival around dusk nearly a week after their departure.

As they rode along the coastline and came upon the estate, Dorian looked around in wonderment, taking in the breathtaking forests and fields that led nearly up to the beaches, eventually giving way to sand and rock—not ideal for sunbathing, but still an incredible view nonetheless. Damien smiled when he saw the mage’s wide brown eyes, appreciating the way Dorian earnestly took in the new surroundings as they passed by.

The memories that came flooding back to him as they crossed pathways he knew like the back of his hand made Damien realize it had been a long time since he had been home. It felt good—familiar, despite the reasons for their journey. The gates to estate were already open and they slowed their horses to a trot as they entered, riding up to Damien’s childhood home, a large, but modestly embellished house that sat at the top of a small incline.

Stable hands were quick to take their horses, catching Damien off-guard when they referred to him as ‘Lord Trevelyan’ rather than ‘Inquisitor’—not that he minded. The front door of the house opened as they approached and Damien smiled, greeting his mother graciously. Dorian noted she looked tired—dark brown hair pulled into a graceful bun and bags under her gray-blue eyes.

“Hi mama.” Damien’s voice sounded almost small, something Dorian didn’t think a man of his stature was capable of—it was almost endearing.

“My darling,” his mother replied, her voice soft and her eyes lighting up when he bent down to wrap his arms around her. “You run off and become the Inquisitor and all we get is one short note home.”

“I’ve been… busy,” Damien replied almost guiltily and Dorian couldn’t help, but snort in amusement. Lady Trevelyan released her son, brushing a stray strand of his short ginger hair off of his forehead affectionately as she let go, sending a pang through Dorian’s chest—it made him miss home.

“Who’s this lovely soul that you asked to accompany you?”

“Dorian Pavus, my lady. Inquisition mage and the one responsible for keeping your son on his toes.” Dorian threw a teasing glance at the Inquisitor, who raised an amused eyebrow.

“Someone has to,” Lady Trevelyan replied, smiling and moving to kiss him on both cheeks—a warm gesture Dorian wasn’t expecting, but appreciated nonetheless. “He’s standing here alive, so I suppose you’re doing a rather good job.”

“He might have saved me a couple of times,” Damien chided warmly, moving to take Dorian’s bag as they stepped inside the house behind his mother. “And you were worried about your mustache.” That was more directed at the Tevinter scion, who shook his head in reply.

The inside of the house was warm, a stark contrast to the cooling air outside and Damien was grateful. Few things had changed inside—each room was moderately decorated with furs and antique, but expensive furniture. Dorian looked around, eyeing the vivid paintings on the walls encased in heavy wooden frames and admiring the clean trim that lined the mildly painted walls, noting the terrestrial and cosmic elements that seemed to be woven into each piece. The decor aesthetic was similar to the great hall at Skyhold—likely at the request of the Inquisitor to make him feel more at home.

They passed through the foyer into the kitchen, Damien and his mother chatting away as if he had never left. Dorian could see where the ginger had gotten many of his mannerism and found her to be a generally pleasant and patient presence, if a little sarcastic in her goading—just like him. And she spoke to Dorian as if he wasn’t a stranger—another surprising change that wasn’t unwelcome.

“Go see your father,” Lady Trevelyan said, ushering them towards the stairs. “I had the maids put fresh sheets and a few extra pillows on your bed. I don’t want your partner here to be uncomfortable. I’ll have wine for you both when you’re finished.”

Dorian opened his mouth to say something, but Damien just ushered him up the stairs before the mage could, humming a small ‘thank you’ to his mother instead. Dorian found that the upstairs was decorated similarly to the bottom floor, Damien’s room included, though the bookshelves that lined one wall of the Inquisitor's former room did catch his eye once they entered.

“You’re welcome to peruse and bring whichever ones you’d like back with you,” Damien replied, following Dorian’s gaze as he set their things down on his bed. “We have an actual library on the other side of the house—remind me before we leave. There’s a copy of Tales of the Ancient Somniari somewhere in there that I want to read again.”

“Your mother’s a sharp one,” Dorian commented, changing the subject as he scanned the bindings, running his fingers over some of them, the aged leather cold against his skin. “She took one look at me and knew who I was to you.”

“It’s a fair assumption to make,” Damien said sitting down on the edge of his bed and laying back for a moment. “And where do you think I get it from?”

“Fair enough. Had I brought you home there would have been a number of scathing remarks I’m sure,” Dorian sniffed, finally turning from the books to sit down at Damien’s side. “Said behind my back, of course, but just within earshot to make sure I’m aware of their disapproval.”

“I’m the only child she has left—she’s always been accepting, but more so since Elizabeth died,” Damien replied, sitting up again and intertwining their fingers. “I’m sure my father will have a thing or two to say, so I apologize in advance for any potential insults thrown your way.”

“Oh my poor pride—however will I be able to handle it,” Dorian retorted, leaning his head on the Inquisitor’s shoulder, a chill running down his spine when Damien pressed a kiss to his dark hair. There was a long, comfortable pause.

“Tell me to get up or else I won’t and this entire trip will have been pointless.”

“No time like the present, amatus. The sooner you talk to him, the sooner we get some of that wine your mother offered,” Dorian insisted gently, pushing himself up and dragging Damien to his feet. “Plus, if things go poorly, we can get drunk and you can walk me around this gorgeous estate of yours. I’m sure you have plenty of places from your childhood begging to be debauched again.”

That made Damien laugh and the warrior shook his head, relinquishing Dorian’s hand and opening the door again.

“I can think of a few.”

Even though it only took a few moments, the walk to Damien’s parent’s room felt like it took an eternity and the Inquisitor hesitated when he reached for the door handle, his hand hovering for a moment. Dorian rested his hand gently on Damien’s shoulder, using his free hand to pull the ginger’s face down to meet his lips gently before smoothing that hand through Damien’s red hair, silently promising that he was there. Damien rested his forehead against Dorian’s for a moment, taking in a breath before turning the handle, pushing the door open.

The large master bedroom was dim, the fire in the fireplace having burned down to just embers, giving the room an orange glow. Bann Trevelyan sat upright in the large bed on the back wall of the room supported by a plethora of plush pillows, dozing, snoring ever so subtly.

Dorian noticed he looked rather pale, but the mage was almost taken aback at just how much Damien resembled him, down to his (albeit) graying ginger hair, strong cheekbones, and when he looked up as they walked in, striking green eyes. Damien’s stride stuttered when his gaze met his father’s.

“Damien,” his father’s voice was low, his tone bordering on exhausted, but he reached up anyway as the Inquisitor approached, his surprise evident. “ My son .”

That broke him. This wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as he had originally anticipated and Damien felt his heart clench in his chest. He hadn’t heard those words in a very long time—he hadn’t expected to hear those words ever again, really.

“Father,” the Inquisitor couldn’t keep his voice from breaking, tears threatening to spill over the edges of his green eyes as he pulled a chair up to his father’s bedside, sitting down and taking his hand. It was warm—a good sign, though his father was shaking.

“And who’s this?”

Damien hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at Dorian, who was perched cautiously near the doorway, before speaking.

“Dorian. He’s a… friend—one of the best mages in the Inquisition.” Damien heard Dorian stifle a chuckle behind him and the ginger threw him a flippant look.

“A friend... where have I heard that one before,” his father quipped lightheartedly, a small smile lighting up his aging face, catching Damien a bit off guard. “He’s welcome to come in.”

Dorian looked to the Inquisitor for approval, approaching and pulling up another nearby chair when Damien beckoned for him to move closer.

“I take it your mother sent for you?”

“She did. I’m starting to think maybe she just wanted me to come home.”

“I think you might be right,” Bann Trevelyan agreed with a chuckle, giving his son’s hand a squeeze. “She likely overstated my condition. There’s no need to worry.”

“Given that you’re bedridden, something had to have happened,” Damien observed, feeling a bit of a cold draft drift over his body as he spoke, causing him to shiver. Dorian felt it, too, pushing himself out of his chair to put wood on the fire, lighting it again with a flick of his wrist.

“Just a bad chest cold and a bit of exhaustion—nothing unusual for someone of my age. I didn’t mean to drag you away from your duties.”

Dorian realized that Damien’s father seemed genuinely surprised to see him—it was likely he hadn’t expected his son to return home at all, given their issues.

“We- I needed the break,” Damien replied quietly. “I was about to chide you for overworking yourself, but that would make me a hypocrite.”

“That’s right—it is Inquisitor now…”

They fell into easy conversation—entirely the opposite of what either Damien or even Dorian expected—discussing the Inquisition and the last year and a half of their lives since the Conclave. Damien was unsurprised to find that little at home had changed due to the Breach, though his father said he felt like he heard more reports about demons roaming the coast than before. Damien had nodded, confirming his scouts had spotted rifts as far away from the Breach as Starkhaven. It was likely there were a few distorting the Fade around Ostwick, too.

Their conversation veered back to the end of the Mage-Templar War and the Breach, the conversation turning solemn when his father mentioned how Elizabeth would have loved to have seen the day. Damien fell quiet, clasping his other hand over his father’s, his gaze downcast.

“Are you two…?” The question went unfinished, but they could both fill in the blanks. They two of them exchanged uneasy glances before Damien spoke.

“Yeah.”

The Inquisitor's eyes fell closed, his brow furrowing in preparation for an onslaught of insults, but his father squeezed his hand again instead, bringing his other hand over to cover Damien’s top hand.

“Good. As long as someone is watching your back,” his father replied gently, giving Dorian a small nod of respect. Dorian returned it subtly, looking over at the Inquisitor to see if he was alright.

Damien opened his eyes again, looking up at his father in astonishment, opening his mouth to say something, but closing it again, unable to find the right words.

“I’m sorry for what I said before you left,” the older Trevelyan started. “I was grieving for your sister and I wrongly placed the blame on you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t accept you as you are. I’m a dreadful father who couldn’t see how badly I was hurting you. All I wanted was for you to be happy, but I was set in doing it my way.”

“I-I-,” But Bann Trevelyan shook his head, silencing his son for the moment.

“I am proud of you, Damien—I always have been. I was just afraid if I told you you’d stop pushing yourself. It doesn’t make up for the pain I’ve caused you, but your absence made me realize what a stubborn fool I was.”

The tears that had gathered at the edges of his green eyes finally spilled over, dripping down Damien’s freckled cheeks as he choked back a sob. Damien’s father drew him closer, moving to rest a hand on the back of his son’s head to pull their foreheads together, letting his eyes fall closed as his son cried.

Damien had waited his entire life to hear those words—he hadn’t expected the apology either, but would accept it nonetheless, unable to stop the tears that fell, his breathing erratic as he tried to stifle the sobs that threatened to escape.

Dorian reached for Damien—the feeling of the Inquisitor’s shoulders shaking as sobs rocked his body making Dorian’s heart clench. Bann Trevelyan moved to whispering comforts to his son, further apologies meant to ease his tears and eventually he quieted. There was a long stretch of silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire and Damien’s shaky breathing.

“Go—spend time with your mother,” his father said softly, smoothing a gentle hand over Damien’s hair. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

The Inquisitor could only manage a nod, releasing his father and moving to stand rather unsteadily. Dorian righted the ginger, leading him gently to the door, closing it behind them as they exited. The mage guided him back to his room, moving to gently wipe the tears from Damien’s freckled cheeks once they were safely inside. Damien nuzzled Dorian’s hand as he did so, his green eyes falling closed as he tried to get his breathing under control.

“...Some part of me wishes he had just yelled at me,” Damien sniffled, laughing lightly when Dorian moved to fix his eyeliner. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Need that drink now?”

“Oh yes.”

Damien took another moment to pull himself together, pressing a kiss to Dorian’s forehead before moving to head downstairs.

“You may have your mother’s mannerisms, but you’re a spitting image of your father,” Dorian commented, following the Inquisitor.

Those words used to make his blood run cold and Damien couldn’t help, but pause as they descended the stairs, looking back at Dorian for a moment.

“Damien I didn’t—,” but the Inquisitor interrupted him, a small smile breaking out on his face.

“It’s alright—there are worse things.”

“To be fair, if you do age that gracefully, I won’t complain.”

“If it helps any, I do think I’m graying a bit already from the stress.”

“Okay—maybe don’t do it like that.”

Damien laughed.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dorian #dorian pavus #dorian x inquisitor #inquisitor x dorian #dorian x trevelyan #male trevelyan #male inquisitor #dailyquotes #my writing #damien trevelyan

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heartlesskitty247 · 6 years

Text

Discordia Headcanons (Requested by no one but I love my wife)

-Discordia is a straight up brat! She knows she can get away with just about anything, since literally everyone is scared shitless of her mom. Because of this she pranks, teases and annoys almost every God and Goddess on the Battlefield.

-"Almost" being the key word. There are some Gods who are just either too busy to deal with Discordia's pratical jokes or too mature to acknowledge them, such as Thoth or Ganesha. There are also some who see Discordia's often rowdy nature as an outcry for affection she never got from her worshippers, such as Terra or (of course) Nox.

-Surprisingly enough, since her arrival Discordia and Aphrodite have gotten along rather swimmingly. Maybe it's because of Aphrodite's insane amounts of sass, or just because they're both Mages. Whatever the reason these two are almost inseparable.

-But that doesn't mean Aphrodite is safe from Discordia's pranks. No one is safe.

-Thanatos finds his sisters both rather annoying. Not only will Discordia tease him and make fun of him nonstop, but she'll always get away with it. Not to mention she keeps buying this weird stuff the mortals created called "Cocoa Puffs" with his money, and then won't even share any with him! Well he doesn't want any in the first place... But she should at least ask!

-Nemesis is very calm and patient with her sister. She never minds her pranks or her mischief, as long as no one gets hurt or she doesn't go starting another war. Nemesis knows that Discordia will never stop being her chaotic self, but she wants to at least try to teach her some form of good morals.

-Nox is so very proud of her Mage daughter. "Following in mama's footsteps," She'll always say with teary eyes and a big happy grin as she watches her precious little babies slaughter the entire enemy team.

-Since Terra and Nox are close friends, Discordia has been subject to Terra's doting and motherly love many times. Not that she's not grateful and all, but affection is all gross and mushy and totally lame. Plus it ruins her chaotic flow.

-Discordia has quite a few "Daddy issues", mainly because she doesn't have one. She'll frequently latch herself onto the closest God on her team she deems worthy of being her "father", such as Loki or Cu Chulainn. Nox tries to console her and tries to get her to leave those poor confused Gods alone, but she'll just shout something about "This is my father now and you can't stop me from getting his love!"

-Discordia is a total meme queen. Best not miss her with that Mountain Dew and Dorito's, else you'll have to "Cash her ouside, how bou dat?"

-If you're dying inside from those cringey memes, you ain't seen shit yet!

NSFW Headcanons:

-Yeah. We're doing thi- Nox... Nox what're you-- wait, NO! Nox... NOX?! I-I was only kidding, ahaha... N-Nox pl-please... put the chainsaw down... uh, Nox NOX NOX OH DEAR CHRIST I WAS ONLY KIDDING PUT THE CHAINSAW AWAY!!!

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fire-emblem-heroes-supports · 7 years

Text

Summoner/Oliver C-S Support

Written by Neko

C SUPPORT

[y/n]: Another day, another battle won, and another Hero freed from Embla’s grasp. Now who might it be this-?

Oliver: Ah. You must be the Summoner I’ve heard so much about.

[y/n]: … … … I hate this job.

Oliver: I expected someone much more remarkable, someone brilliant and stunning. Not some common street rat.

[y/n]: And I expected an actual Hero, not degenerate garbage. Wow. I guess we can’t all get what we want, now can we?

Oliver: What?! Now you listen well, you vermin. I am the pinnacle of beauty, the very entity of-

[y/n]: You’re a slaver and a scoundral and you should’ve died in Serenes. Don’t try to play coy around me, former Senator. Askr is well versed on the history of all worlds. I know all your crimes and there’s only one here that disgusts me more then the likes of you!

Oliver: Grrr… hmph. The history books speak of me and dare not mention my brilliance? How droll. So what if I bought a few animals here and there? They should’ve been honored to even catch my eye. The ugly, disgraceful, fettering masses of the sub-human scum deserve to burn, yet a few have such purity and divinity to them, grace that deserves preservation. You should feel much the same, my good Summoner. If you know of our world’s history, then you know well the rift that divides us, yes?

[y/n]: Every word you just said… makes me want to rip out your throat.

Oliver: Ugh! And yet you are but a brute. I see I waste my time with you. No matter… I am sure this ‘Order of Heroes’ might have some with more class then you.

[y/n]: Oh no you don’t!

[Oliver and (y/n) have reached support rank C.]

B SUPPORT

Oliver: Ahhhh, Summoner. A few moments of your time.

[y/n]: The answer is, and has always been, no. No, no, NO!

Oliver: Am I not even allowed to speak with you then?!

[y/n]: I thought you didn’t associate with the “ugly?”

Oliver: Grrr… much as I am loathe to admit it, I am bested by you and your entourage. Most of the “Heroes” here are just as meager as you and the few that have caught my eye are usually well protected. That sweet dame Deirdre for example… beauty unbridled, something I never thought I’d see in a human again after meeting my precious birds… only to have a cobolt knight and scarlet mage see me back into my grave.

[y/n]: Oh, so you met her husbands?

Oliver: More than one?!

[y/n]: Don’t inquire into the Heroes of other worlds if you’re not ready to hear some fucked up stuff.

Oliver: Agh! What ghastly language! And you are supposed to represent this order? From your apparel to your face, now even your very bearing are you utterly repulsive! This cannot be allowed to stand! I see now why I was brought into this world and why it was the Goddess deigned for me to fall into your hand.

[y/n]: What are you getting on about now?

Oliver: As the ever so radiant fellow I am, I will be the one to teach you how to be properly beautiful… or at least less drab than you currently are right now.

[y/n]: Are you kidding me? I don’t want too much of your company, you simpleton.

Oliver: Do not worry. Though you are an arrogant peasant, I will help you to shine… at least dimly.

[y/n]: Oliver?! Oliver! Oh, Jesus Christ…

[Oliver and (y/n) have reached support rank B.]

A SUPPORT

Oliver: Ahhh, there you are. I’m glad you’ve finally surrendered yourself to my classes.

[y/n]: You wouldn’t stop inquiring into my whereabouts. Sharena ended up begging me to come find you so as to stop your harassment of the other Heroes.

Oliver: Well, I wouldn’t have had to resort to such extremes if you would’ve come willingly to begin with, now would I? I am more convinced than ever that I must resolve this issue with you so that you may learn to better let go of your troubles.

[y/n]: My… troubles?

Oliver: Every time you look upon me, you scowl and let off such an intense fury. It is utterly off-putting. At first, I simply figured that was the extent of your hate, but after contemplating it… I realized there was no way you could truly hate me.

[y/n]: Oh, for fuck’s sake…

Oliver: Then it dawned upon me. As young as you are, you have the weight of more worlds than one upon you! You are burdened every day by your duties and thus you cannot comprehend pure beauty when it deigns to grace you with its presence. Of course you would glower! Even greater beings such as myself might buckle under such pressure, after all.

[y/n]: No, that would just be how much I hate you. Although I’ll give you some credit… You’re not wrong about my situation. Between Embla and Muspell, my hands are full. I’m expected to bring victory against two kingdoms and I was never bred for combat or tactics like others. Everything I’ve learned, everything I am now, I’ve had to pick up in the middle of it all. There isn’t exactly time to relax or lessen that burden.

Oliver: The goddess had put before you a great trial. It is upon you to prove yourself not only powerful and genius, but also magnificent as well. And while you have plenty of strength and wit, it will be up to me to help you with the most important part of these three virtues.

[y/n]: I don’t think-… Never mind. If I don’t agree to this, we’ll just go full circle. Very well Oliver. Let’s begin.

Oliver: Excellent. Now to begin with…

[Oliver and (y/n) have reached support rank A.]

S SUPPORT

Oliver: Hmmmm…

[y/n]: … Oliver, is there something wrong? You’ve been staring at me intently.

Oliver: I feel as if I have outdone myself as of late.

[y/n]: What do you mean?

Oliver: Only that when we first met, I saw you as little more then a rabid dog scowling amidst the glimmering light of an angel… yet now, after all that you’ve learned from me, the many smiles I’ve seen when interacting with your fellow peers… I thought you would only be slightly more radiant, but now you shine with a beauty as wondrous as my own.

[y/n]: Is this… going where I think it is?

Oliver: I am a man of nobility and passion, my dear. My very being is dedicated to the preservation of beauty and grace. And now that I see it so deeply within you, I cannot let you continue this path alone. Even though I cannot sway you from your duties, I will never let you out of my sight.

[y/n]: Yes… Yes, it did just go there. Oh, God… Well, Oliver, I do appreciate the commitment. (And keeping you here will at least get you out of everyone’s hair.)

Oliver: Yes. Do not worry, my darling treasure. Daddy will protect you.

[y/n]: Never… call yourself that… again. [Oliver and (y/n) have reached support rank S.]

Confession Quote

Oliver: You have nothing to fear, my precious jewel. I will not let any of those unsightly vermin put even a single scratch upon you. Relax and allow yourself to find comfort in my arms.

#*drinks pure vodka*#male heroes #male and female heroes #fire emblem path of radiance #fire emblem radiant dawn #submission #oliver #summoner #oliver x summoner #summoner x oliver

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fallen029 · 6 years

Text

Remember Me: Twists and Turns.2

Previous Chapter

Bright and early the next morning, the two little boys woke up, one rushing off to the guildhall to grab and job he could complete quickly and return to benefit from his brother's inadequacies while said brother only sat in the kitchen, toying with his puzzle cube, waiting on their caretaker to return from her training session. When she walked through the backdoor, drenched in sweat and in need of a shower, Erza jumped at the sight of Kai seated at the kitchen table.

"What are you doing up?" she asked with a bit of a frown. "Kai? Did your brother wake you as he left? He didn't ditch you again, did he?"

"No, Ravan's going out on a job."

"Good," she said as she headed over to the sink for a glass of water. "As he should. AS we all should. It is a gift to receive the blessing of magic. And to be such young boys and around so much talent. You could both be far more proficient than even I or the Master, should you actually put your minds to it. Far too often, talents of the young become detriments of the old and-"

"Hey, Erza, can you help me with something?"

"What is it?" she asked as she turned, glass in her hand, and came closer. "Kai?"

"Do you know how to solve this?" In the dim lighting of the pre-dawn, he held out his still all jumbled up cube to her. "Erza?"

With a frown, the woman investigated momentarily before saying, "Kai, I thought that it might be something to do with your magic. Do you not listen? That should be your main concern."

"You don't understand."

"When it comes to you? I rarely do."

"Ravan bet me that if I can't solve it, I'll have to be his bow boy and he always tries to hit me with them and I don't like it, Erza. I can't have that happen again, when he nicked me with one in the ear and I cried in front of Marin. I can't! I'm an uncle now. It's a lot of pressure."

For a long moment, the swordswoman only stared at the young boy. Then, with a slight shrug, she reached down to pick up the cube.

"Nothing is too hard for me, mind you," she said as she studied the cube for a few moments. "I'm quite proficent in most things."

"I know, Erza," he said in what might have been an exasperated tone had he been a bit older and known what that word meant. "Have you ever done one? When you were a kid?"

"When I was a kid," she said as she turned the cube a few different ways, studying the action, "I worked."

"I'm working too," he defended. "On this."

Erza sighed, softly, before saying, "It is a bet, then, yes? That's what you said?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well then, I do not wish for you to have someone else do it for you."

"What do you mean?"

"Cheating, Kai," she said as she handed the cube back to him, "is not winning. And while, if I toyed around with this for a bit, I might be able to figure out how to do it, that would not be you doing it. And that would be unfair to your brother."

"B-But Erza-"

"You must be honest and honorable, above all," she told him with a bow of her head. "Would you feel good about winning should someone else complete the cube for you?"

"I don't want you to complete the cube."

"But you want me to tell you how to do it, right?"

"Well...just to help."

"I am, at this time, unable to offer up any tips that would not lead directly to you solving this puzzle," she told him simply as she turned then back towards the sink, to get more water. "Perhaps someone at the guildhall who is more versed in it can be of assistance. But Kai, do remember, I would not be too happy to find out that you've cheated."

He wanted to pout, but that would get you nowhere with the woman. It was best to just mutter, "Yes, Erza," and sulk silently to yourself.

Which is what he did.

"Hey, Erza?" he called though as she headed out of the room, off to shower. Holding up, the woman glanced back at him with a frown. Instead of asking about the cube though, he only smiled sheepishly as he asked, "Can you walk me to the guildhall? I don't wanna get lost."

This got a shake of the head from the woman, but Kai knew it meant yes.

When they arrived, the place was a bit bustling, but Kai found the other children quite easily. As Erza wished him well on his bet, Kai went to go see if any of them could be of some assistance.

"Hi, Locke!" he greeted loudly when he found the older boy shooting marbles out behind the hall with Navi and Haven. "Hi, Navi! Hi-"

"Marin," Haven replied before he could finish, "is inside."

"I don't need to see Marin," he explained as he stopped before them. "I wanted to see you guys."

"You can't play," the blonde kept up. "You don't have any jewels or anything we want to play you for so-"

"I don't want to play," he assured her as he held out his puzzle cube. "I wanna know if Locke can help me with this. He's really smart, you know."

Which wasn't the right thing to say around Haven, apparently. She'd already lost a good chunk of jewels playing stupid marbles (which caused her to accuse Locke of cheating only to be rebuked and accused herself, which made her double down that she was not because she definitely was, but it wasn't going her way, so was it really cheating then? Was it?) and was not in the mood to be reminded that Locke was so smart. Bleh.

She hated him.

Kai, that is.

And Locke, but that was a different kind of hate.

So as he fled, Kai did, front he lightening bolts that were sent his way, he decided that he'd ask Locke for help later.

Sometimes the older kids could be real mean.

That's what he told Marin inside where he found her sitting with her Aunt Lisanna and Uncle Elfman.

"She's a bully," Marin assured her friend because this was a new word that she'd learned, from her Aunt Ever, that fit Haven perfectly. "So don't feel too bad."

"I don't," he told her because he didn't. "I'm just mad that she made me run!"

"Running's good for men," Elfman insisted for him. "If you're gonna run from a battle, you might as well do it with as much heart as possible."

Lisanna made a face at her older brother before saying to Kai, "Let me see this special cube of yours, huh?"

Handing it over, Kai sat up real tall to watch his friend's aunt study the cube before, with a giggle, she passed it over to her brother.

"You were good at these, huh, Elfman?"

"Good at them?" he asked with a slight grin. "I was downright great at them!"

"Then could you give me some tips?" Kai asked, hopeful as he watched the overly muscular man toy with the little cube that looked almost comical in his massive hands. "Elfman? Uncle to uncle?"

"Uncle to uncle?' Lisanna questioned with a bemused smile.

"He's the uncle to my baby," Marin said, nodding. Having been cradling it the entire time, she held it out to her aunt then. "Daddy said he couldn't be the papa."

"Of course," Lisanna remarked.

"It's weird," Elfman grumbled, unconcerned with the current topic, but rather focused entirely on the child's toy in his hand, "but… I don't remember anything at all about these things."

"What?" Lisanna remarked as both Kai and Marin visibly deflated some. "Not you, Elf. Isn't memory, like, super manly?"

"Arg!" And Elfman threw the toy down. Fearful now of him breaking it, Kai reached over to snatch it back up. The man banged a fist into the table. "Why can I not remember?"

"Maybe because you're super old now?" Lisanna mused. "Knocked around one too many times? Or- Oh, Bickslow."

And she got up suddenly, Lisanna did, to go over to where the man had just entered the guildhall. Her demeanor visibly changed when he did and as she walked over, but only Marin seemed too interested in it as Elfman and Kai both were too into their puzzle cube issue.

"How could you forget, Elfman?" the young boy was complaining. "I thought you were a man!"

"I am!" the oaf insisted. "Of course I am. But...my memory recently-"

"I was counting on you. Uncle to uncle."

"I know, I know."

"Now what am I going to do? I can't go ask Locke again yet 'cause Haven's so mean-"

"Let me see it again," Elfman insisted. "And maybe-"

"No way!" Kai held it away from the man's grasping hands. "You might break it."

"I will not."

"You will so."

"He will so what?"

And it was Evergreen then, coming to fill Lisanna's spot. At the sound of her voice, Elfman became even more enraged at himself, as it was one thing ot embarrass yourself in front of a fellow uncle; in front of your girlfriend was a whole other.

"He's gonna break my toy," Kai informed the woman with a nod as Elfman only glared. "Mrs. Master told me that he could help me solve it, but he's not good at it at all! I think he's a liar."

"You don't call," Elfman griped to the boy, "a man a liar, Kai."

"Well, what do you call him then?" the boy challenged back because he had no fear, in any way, of the two people before him. At all. They were just Marin's aunt and uncle to him. Nothing more. "When he lies?"

Elfman's unleashing on the boy was squashed by Marin finally speaking up. But it wasn't about her friend's current problems. Rather, it ws about her aunt's.

"Why's Aunt Lisanna yelling at Bickslow?" she asked as it was becoming clear, from across the bar, that that was what was going on. "Are they fighting?"

Evergreen glanced over then (Kai and Elfman were too busy glaring at one another to care) and made a face before saying to her niece, "It's just adult stuff. Don't worry about it."

In most situations, she wouldn't. She spent a nice chunk of her childhood in the guildhall and the rest around her extended family. Arguments were frequent in the line of work they did. Being a mage was stressful both mentally and at times financially. In no way was it a foreign concept to her. Bickslow and Lisanna, however no exceptions, rarely did to the extent of others she saw.

Recently though, it felt like all they ever did.

She first noticed it when she spent the night over at their house two weeks ago and, since then, neither ever seemed to be on the same page. Whenever they were around one another, they were always ticked off, it seemed like, and though Marin was no stranger to marital rifts (her parents seemed to be stuck in a constant struggle of one), she didn't necessarily like them either. Especially when it had to do with her Aunt Lisanna.

Marin wanted to explain this to Evergreen, but wasn't quite sure how to and, already, the argument her other aunt and uncle were having was being broken up by her mother who, after noticing, went to tell Lisanna and Bickslow to knock off, no doubt. Laxus had had a rather bad attitude about things happening in the bar recently. Team spats, relationships falling and, though he clearly cared about Lisanna and Bickslow more than most, he'd been so sour recently he was very likely to make things worse, should he notice them arguing.

It was looking over at her father though, who had his headphones in and was very busy going over some paperwork, that gave Marin an idea.

"Kai," she said excitedly as she seemed to perk right back up from the thought that she was having. "Why don't we ask my daddy to help?"

"Why would Laxus know anything about this?" Elfman asked. "He's no man! I am. I-"

"Oh, yeah, he knew what this was at the toy shop, right?" Suddenly, Kai was happy as well. "Let's go ask him!"

And Evergreen or Elfman probably should have stopped the two of them, but by then she'd transitioned into teasing the man over his lack of puzzle prowess and, well, what could be done? Nothing much as the two headed over to the clearly working man to interrupt his life with their nonsense.

Laxus was all ready too, to snap at the person that tugged on the sleeve of his coat...before he looked down and saw it was the only person he would never snap at.

Err, at least, he always tried not to.

Marin was his little tiny baby who was always so timid and fearful. He hated when the realizations would dawn on him, some days, that it was probably partially his fault she was this way, what with his outbursts and temper. Pushing the thoughts away was the only way to feel good about himself.

Being a father was hard.

"Daddy," she said slowly as he only stared down at her, "can you help us?"

Tugging an earphone out, he asked, "With what, Marin? Daddy's very busy."

"Oh." Sadly, she kicked at the ground and he felt like an ass. "Well, Kai needs to learn how to solve his puzzle cube and Uncle Elf doesn't remember any more how to do it and-"

"Why do you think I would know?" He was grumbling and he didn't want to grumble, but it was just how it was coming out.

"You knew what it was," Kai grumbled right now because time was short and he did not wanna end up Ravan's bow boy. At all.

"I know what a lot of things are that I don't know how to work. And watch your turn. If I talked to my master this way when I was your age-"

"You talked to your master terribly," came the voice from beside him, "and you know it."

"Demon," he complained as she leaned over to refill his mug of ale. "I'm working."

"You're talking to the kids."

"I was working before that. And I'm finished now, anyways. I can't help you, Marin. Go ask the other kids. Maybe one of them-"

"Haven told us to go away," Marin told him with a shrug.

"They were playing marbles," Kai explained, "and said since we don't have any jewels that we can't-"

"Are they back there gambling again?"

"Dragon," Mirajane tried, but he was already shoving up.

"No, Mira, I told them to cut that out," he grumbled. "Don't need people coming to me talking about how my kid's swindling theirs out of money. They're kids! Got plenty of damn time to be addicts."

"You're not a very fun master."

"That's because I'm running a damn guild, not a damn orphanage. Fucking kids."

Marin and Kai knew better than to be seen with Laxus by the older kids after he broke up their game (then they'd call them tattletales and babies and they didn't like that much at all), so they hung back with Mirajane, who gave them juice before getting back to work. They were busy sipping at it when the older children came in.

They were all pouting, a bit, after getting told off by their master, so they gave it a few minutes, Kai and Marin did, before they headed over there to join them.

"What do you want?" Haven griped as, with her eyes folded across her chest, she glared.

"What we wanted before," Kai explained as Marin held her baby doll close. So far, Haven hadn't tried to harm her new toy, but she was fearful of the imminent attack. She'd lost a lot of other dolls the same way. "Can one of you help us with our cube?"

Kai wanted to add to that that he was specifying Locke, who was insanely smart in the little boy's eyes. OF course, Kai could hardly read, struggled with correct tenses, and was all around under educated for his age range so this wasn't a hard thing to be, but still.

Locke could read, write, and even enjoyed those two things.

That made him a genius, practically.

"No," Haven said simply because trying would give her the chance ot fail and she never took that chance, ever. She only did things that she knew for certain that she would succeed in and gave little thought to ones she might fail. "So go away."

Considering Navi had already given them an answer the day before, she just looked to Locke, awaiting his answer.

"Let me see it," he sighed, holding out a hand which Kai placed the cube in. "Where'd you get it?"

"Master bought it for me," the little boy said happily. "At the toy store. I'm part of the family now, you know."

"No," Haven told him simply. "You're not. So I don't know."

"Well, I am. I'm the baby's uncle."

"What baby?"

"The baby."

"If you're the uncle," Navi challenged with a bright grin, "what's it's name?"

Frowning, Kai looked to Marin before shrugging. "I call it the doll. Or the baby. Because I'm the uncle and I can do stuff like that."

"Yeah, well-"

"This is really cool," Locke interrupted them as he sat there, twisting and turning the little contraption between his fingers. Blowing his tangled black mop of hair out of his face, he stared down at the cube with intense red eyes. "I'mma go buy one!"

"Then you know how to fix it?" Kai asked, eyes alight. But, with a frown, Locke lifted his head and shook it at the other boy.

"No," he told him with a sigh. "I don't yet. But if you give me some time-"

"There is no time!" Kai insisted. "I have to get it all figured out before Ravan returns from his job."

The three older children thought about questioning him on this, but honeslty, none of them cared too much what the two boys did. Ravan found himself somewhat friendly with Navi at times, an enemy of Locke at most, and the mortal enemy of Haven for eternity, but as far as friends with, none of them were in any way. As for Kai, he was mostly seen as Haven's little sister's friend and nothing more. A nuisance, a lot, actually.

He was quite obnoxious.

"Well," Locke told him slowly as, reluctantly, he moved to hand the cube back. "I guess you could come over to my house. I have to go home soon and do some chores. I bet my mom will-"

"Alright, let's go!"

Excitedly, Kai sprang to his feet and, to his surprise, Locke watched the others do so as well.

"Oh," he remarked with a frown. "You're all coming over."

"I have to ask Daddy first," Marin told him slowly as Haven made a face and called her a baby, but she didn't care much.

There had been a terrible time, once, when she didn't ask before leaving and she had the most horrific experience of her life.

Marin never wanted to go through that again.

If asking her father's permission was all that had to happen to keep her safe, she was more than willing to do so.

Laxus tried to talk her out of going, because he knew that Marin was prone to getting upset when left alone with Haven and the others too long, but she was insistent on going with Kai to see his journey through and, well, what could Laxus do?

What could he ever do?

The most power he amassed, the less powerful he felt.

"Just be home for dinner," Laxus sighed. "And don't go anywhere else, okay? Not without permission, you know. And if Haven starts being mean-"

"Daddy, I have to go."

He felt silly for worrying, but Haven had only been getting worse, recently, towards her sister it felt. Though Marin was strong enough to stand up for herself, as she was the one with the lacrima, she seemed to forget this fact far too often.

Haven, however, never forgot.

It's why she had to demoralize Marin at every turn.

That and she was just sour about life in general, it seemed.

And spoiled, Laxus reminded himself as he watched his daughters leave.

That was the biggest one.

"Where are the kids going?"

"Mira," he grumbled as, this time, she came by with something for him to eat. "You know, I try to be present in this hall, not doing all my work holed up in my office, but when I do that, you just bother me the whole time."

"I bother you because I care."

"Yeah, well-"

"Can you do something for me?" she asked as she refilled his still mostly filled already glass. "Dragon?"

"If it involves getting up from this chair-"

"Can you talk to Bickslow? Again? He and Lisanna-"

"Mira," he told her with a long sigh. "It's their own business. I already told you that."

"But-"

"She knew how he was before she got with him, had a kid with him." Lifting his his mug to his lips, the man said simply, "After all, not everyone can be as happy as us, huh?"

Mirajane sighed a bit, watching as he shoved the plate of food to the side and went back to his papers, but slowly did nod her head inn agreement.

Not everyone.

Full Story on Fanfic

(Mostly) Full Series on Archive

#Miraxus #Bixanna #Erza Scarlet #Fairy Tail #Fanfic #2 of 5

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miss-m-calling · 3 years

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Fandom Growth Exchange 2021

Fandoms:

The Marianne trilogy - Sheri S. Tepper

Jutro će promeniti sve | Morning Changes Everything (TV)

Senke nad Balkanom | Shadows over the Balkans a.k.a. Black Sun (TV)

Бeсa ǀ Besa (TV)

Oficir s ružom | The Officer with a Rose (1987)

Dear author,

Hello and thank you for writing for me, and extra special thanks that you’re tackling one of these tiny canons of my heart. :-)

I’m Miss_M on AO3. For all requests, I am asking for fic.

General likes:

-pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and missing-scene stories

-character-driven as well as plot-driven stories

-fics which mix humor and angst/serious business (when this fits the canon)

-characters at work and play

-group dynamics, family dynamics (including constructed families), professional partnerships, friendships, alliances, rivalries, intimate couples (new lovers/first times as well as long-term/established couples), UST-ridden couples who are not just UST-ridden but connected in other ways too

-irony, snark, humor, angst – all arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in

-linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories

-hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, “everything is awful but you’re here and maybe I don’t entirely hate that” endings

-worldbuilding

-spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, tough characters with (maybe not so well) hidden vulnerabilities, characters who are their own worst enemies, characters who manage to get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other, characters who may not be exactly friends and may well irritate one another but manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise/reluctance/discomfort), characters who just cannot get along with each other or find common ground

-workplace stories (this can mean anything from an actual workplace/casefic/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters get to be competent

Shippy and smutty likes:

-(where it fits the characters) banter

-competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved)

-”oh god why did it have to be you what did I do to deserve this“

-”come here and say it to my face/do that again/kiss me, you motherfucker”

-bickering yet loving couples

-characters who are serious about their romantic interests

-characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are

-characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed

-fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping

-characters who are incompatible in some important way (they are ideological enemies, cop and criminal, spies from opposite sides, or there has been betrayal!!!), and while they love and/or want each other, they’re not willing to change sides or abandon/compromise their identity/beliefs for the other’s benefit

-I don’t know how better to phrase this than: smut which fits the characters; how does their canon dynamics spill over into hubba hubba stuff?

-sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves

-sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition or antagonism

-“this is a bad idea but we’re going for it hammer and tongs”

-not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not

-characters getting way more into the sex or being more affected by it than they thought they would

-quick and intense sex, slow and intense sex, rough yet willing sex (when it fits the characters), unexpectedly emotional and/or tender sex

-masturbation while thinking of the other half of the ship (or not wanting to think about them only oops there they are in the fantasy!)

-first time sex

-established relationship, we-know-each-other-so-well sex

-”we’ve both wanted this and now we both know it so here we go diving in headfirst” sex

-for het and/or slash, oral, vaginal, anal incl. pegging, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – all is good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon – I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” or “clit” sexy.

Ship/smut DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting D/s, formalized BDSM, painful sex, hard kinks (holding someone down playfully, hair pulling and such like, the odd spank are a-OK) scat, watersports knife/gun/blood play incest deaging/infantilization, mommy/daddy kink under-16yos in sexual situations humiliation body distortion/horror (feeding/weight kink, come inflation, vore, etc.) unrequested ships/pairings soulmates and soul marks pregnancy and children (can be mentioned if canon, just don’t make the whole fic about them) wedding setting/theme secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job xeno, tentacles, bestiality noncon/dubcon

Other DNWs:

torture and abuse (this and noncon/dubcon can be mentioned, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it) descriptions of vomit, shit, and piss (”He pissed up against a tree” and the like is fine), toilet humor lots of gore/blood (mention it, yes; lovingly describe it, no), cannibalism, serious illness or injury character bashing genderswap/genderbent characters, characters as kids/young teens issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons death of requested characters hopeless, unrelenting gloom/angst/horror RL holiday setting/theme, RL religions as a major theme (invented fictional holidays and rituals are fine) reference to RL current events 1st and 2nd person POV unrequested crossovers or fusions AUs which have nothing to do with canon fic written in lapslock

Requests:

The Marianne Trilogy - Sheri S. Tepper

Marianne Zahmani, Makr Avehl Zahmani, Aghrehond, Therat, various combos thereof

What is this canon: Low fantasy, feminist trilogy about Marianne, a student at an American university who comes from the tiny, fictional country of Alphenlicht, wedged in between Turkey and Iran, with a native religion that vaguely resembles Zoroastrianism, a long tradition of both light and dark magic, and civil conflict with echoes of the Cold War (one part of the country seceded with Soviet help). Marianne is financially dependent on her abusive older brother Harvey, but trying to assert her independence. Then she meets Makr Avehl, a cousin and de facto president of Alphenlicht, who’s both a mage and a charmer. And then Marianne gets targeted by dark magic and has to become self-assertive and figure out how to save herself, even as Makr Avehl also tries to save her (and sweep her off her feet), often with more complicated results than he intended. Every book introduces a different set of magical challenges, most of which transport Marianne to a different constructed/magical realm, with disturbing parallels to the cruelties of the real world and some interesting meta commentary on gender relations. Also in the mix are Aghrehond, Makr Avehl’s loyal retainer, chauffeur, and all-around kind soul, and Therat, an intense young mage in training.

The books came out in the late 1980s and were reprinted in a one-volume omnibus edition. They’re long out of print now, but you might find them at your library or used copies for sale online.

While I have a like-get-annoyed relationship with most of Tepper’s work I’ve read, I adore this trilogy unreservedly. I love the mixture of dark fantasy, sly humor, creepiness, complex magical systems and surreal constructed/parallel/hidden worlds described in just enough detail while remaining, for lack of a better word, magical, the intersection of old and new and invented worlds… I adore Marianne, whose lives (it makes sense in context) have made her many things: the traumatized yet defiant survivor, the semi-skillful player of the game of life and magic, the lover and wife and mover-and-shaker in her own right. Her relationship with the other characters – romantic, sometimes overbearing, arrogant, yet loving and lovable Makr Avehl; intense and dedicated Therat; loyal, warm, kind, humorous Aghrehond – are so rich and wonderful. I love all the playing with and inverting and deconstruction of tropes and cliches, the aforementioned magical/constructed/parallel worlds of whimsy and creepiness that riff on ordinary aspects of the real world while also running on their own internal logic…

Canon-specific DNWs: Harvey or Madame Delubovoska appearing in the fic (you may mention them); focusing on Marianne’s pregnancy or on her and Makr Avehl’s daughter; anything over M rating for sex

Some prompts:

Any/all of these characters visit the Cave of Light and then try to solve a problem or complete a quest (however grand, mundane or cracky) according to its message.

Road trips with Aghrehond – exploring Alphenlicht and/or magical realms.

Marianne said at the end of the last book that Therat may be surprised – I’d love to see what might surprise Therat, in addition to Marianne and Makr Avehl’s firstborn sharing her name. Or give me Makr Avehl having to work closely with Therat due to some magical/mystical/political issue, given that he’s always dropping unsubtle hints about her scary eyes. Or Aghrehond being deferential yet unintimidated by Therat – and maybe even making Therat laugh.

Any/all of these characters end up visiting fields on the board-game from book 3 which the book didn’t describe – what kind of a place do they encounter? What (probably dangerous, troubling, and/or creepy) adventures do they have?

Marianne promised to meet Queen Buttercup for a meal at Frab Junction’s Marveling Galosh – magical promises are serious things, so what happens when Marianne has to make the date and the others come to save her and possibly get in each other’s way more than they help?

I loved how canon gently sent up Makr Avehl’s image of himself as Marianne’s protector/lover/white knight in the first and third books’ magical worlds. Actually, Makr Avehl as the Freudian chimera in book 1 and as the hapless hero in book 3 are my favorite things about this canon, beside the general worldbuilding and Marianne’s character development. So I’d love to see more variations on that theme - Makr Avehl as Marianne’s hero, both swoony and ridiculous, gentle yet lecherous, intense and funny with it - either in the real world or in some new (and sinister) magical realm (you can tell that I would love worldbuilding for this canon).

As a general note, I do ship Marianne/Makr Avehl, but I would prefer any shippiness to remain at the books’ level, so nothing too explicit and nothing that overwhelms the non-shippy plot, please. I’m more into this canon for the worldbuilding and the inventive magic, and I like how the books mix the shippiness with adventure, magical horror, and often-meta humor. Oh, and I would prefer not to have Harvey Zahmani or Madame Delubovoska appear in the story – they can be mentioned, just no walk-on parts for them please. Walk-on parts for Marianne’s parents or aunt, or for Makr Avehl’s sister are fine.

Jutro će promeniti sve | Morning Changes Everything (TV)

Anđela Knežević, Aleksandra “Saša” Tomić, Ivona Spasić

What is this canon: one-off Serbian TV show, 39 episodes in total. A slice-of-life drama that follows one year (even though it was all filmed in spring and summer, and it shows) in the lives of four thirtysomethings in contemporary Belgrade, dealing with life issues common to that generation but also specific to being a still-young, educated, professionally and existentially frustrated person living in Serbia today. The main characters are: Filip, a programmer who’s lived in the US for several years and kicks off the show by coming home for what’s supposed to be a vacation but turns out to be a permanent stay; his sister Anđela, who’s finishing her PhD, expects to get a permanent teaching position at the University of Belgrade, and has a nice, steady boyfriend she’s bored of, not least because she eventually figures out she’s not straight; Anđela’s roommate Saša, who starts the show running a bar and running through men like Kleenex, and gradually reveals her issues and vulnerabilities; and their friend Ljuba, who’s from a small town, works in a gym, and pinballs between several girlfriends in part because he’s homeless and needs a place to crash. A major supporting character is Ivona, Ljuba’s on-again, off-again girlfriend whom none of Ljuba’s friends like due to her severe personality.

You can watch the whole show here (free account needed).

Listen, this is my show. I feel it in my bones. I rewatch it at least once a year, and I always get so immersed and then wish there were more, even though I respect the showrunners’ decision to let it end with a kind of low-key “and the adventure (their lives) continues…” vibe. So I would be delighted with pretty much anything you choose to write! I am only asking for the female characters because I find them especially rich and interesting, and their dilemmas and problems especially poignant. Feel free to write something funny (that specific city humor!), something with a sad or melancholy or happy or totally open ending, something with or without a plot, a character vignette, a slice of life… All of those would fit the show’s mood and narrative arc. Also, as much local color and detail as you want to work in, I would love love love, especially if it’s from the proverbial krug “dvojke” – and if you want to write the fic in Belgrade Serbian (all the slang! all the cultural references that people born in the 1980s would know!), or include some phrases/words/lines of dialogue in it, I would probably dance a literal jig of joy and celebration.

Canon-specific DNWs: explicit smut (M rating and/or fade to black is fine); Saša/Filip-centric fic; fic centering only on Ivona’s pregnancy and/or baby; soapboxing about Balkan history/conflicts/ethnic relations

Anđela:

-Anđela in Iceland. Dealing with culture shock, especially when she least expects it. Making friends with her African roommate – two people’s experiences of culture shock clashing and/or meshing. Trying to date or hook up with girls in a society that’s a lot less homophobic but also less familiar in every way than Serbia. The emigrant’s inescapable sense that something’s missing: adjusting to her new life and homesickness, knowing why she left but wishing things could be different anyway. Or, it’s the end of Anđela’s postdoc year and she has to decide (again): now what?

-After her year in Iceland, Anđela moves in with Saša again. How has their relationship changed and how has it stayed the same? If she decides to make a go of staying in Serbia, what are Anđela’s career prospects? Anđela’s canon arc is all about figuring out what to do when your life and what you want out of it turn out very differently than you always assumed they would, so it would be cool to see her forge a career path that uses her education and professional skills in unexpected ways.

-She runs again into some of the people who shaped her decision to leave in the first place: Darija, Marta, Miroslav, the two lecturers who squeezed her out of the Psychology Department… Those encounters are not easy or even pleasant, but they give Anđela something important nevertheless: closure or…?

-Of all the main characters, Anđela has the most intense connection to places, like when she rides her rental bike around the city before she leaves for Iceland, or how she’s often framed as being alone in spaces even when there are other people present (the moving-in party, many of her scenes at the university and in Studentski park). Give me more of Anđela just taking in and experiencing a place, whether that’s Belgrade or Iceland or wherever she goes after Iceland.

Saša:

-AU where Saša is the one that goes abroad at the end of the show. What drove her to it? Where does she go and why (or at least, what’s her excuse for visa purposes)? How does it go – does she stay abroad permanently, or does she come back after a while?

-Saša’s half-sister moves to Belgrade to attend FLU (the art academy) and moves in with Saša after Anđela goes abroad. They learn to be friends and sisters and roommates. They grieve the loss of their father in their own as well as in shared ways. There’s a generation gap, despite Saša’s cool-girl persona – how do they navigate it?

-More of Saša and Ljuba running their restaurant. I’d love either something dramatic (someone’s trying to force them to pay protection money or force them out of their rented space, a kitchen incident happens and there are hungry people waiting…), or a totally mundane, cozy vignette (putting together the menu for next week, chef Ljuba absolutely must have this one ingredient and he wants it from Bajlonijeva pijaca because they may charge 350 dinars but quality matters – and Saša really doesn’t see why they can’t just go to Tempo…) It would also be cool to see more of Dina, the high-strung but pretty cool manager at the restaurant where Saša and Ljuba worked before they opened their own place.

-Saša and her mom Svetlana have the hardest time being kind to each other, and it’s not for lack of love. Sometimes people just can’t get along easily. How do they get along not-easily after the ways in which canon changed them both?

-I’m not really interested in Saša/Filip, but you can include that canon ship in whatever you’re writing. Just please don’t make the whole fic be just about the ship.

Ivona:

-I may be the only person who’s watched this show who actually likes Ivona. I love her self-possession, how she is absolutely herself and doesn’t bother to pretend otherwise even if it annoys or makes others uneasy, and she’s arranged her life in a way that works for her. I also love her brief flashes of vulnerability and even relaxation. Maybe a day in her life as a career woman and single mom, either with or without her nice boyfriend and/or Ljuba being around? Re: my blanket DNW for fic revolving around babies and pregnancy – you can include Ivona’s pregnancy and motherhood in the fic, just please don’t make the whole fic be just about that.

-Ivona takes her dog Marlena to a dog show. She has to be very cool and serious, and is like that by nature, but it’s exciting when her dog wins something!

-Ivona interacts more with Anđela and/or Saša. They were once very incompatible roommates, maybe that’s how Ljuba met Ivona in the first place? They happen to just hang out one time, and they won’t ever be friends but maybe they can find some common ground? Saša especially dislikes Ivona and judges Ljuba’s involvement with her, and Ivona’s aloofness and humorlessness can make her seem harsher than she perhaps is – it would be interesting if those two could maybe learn not to dislike each other quite so much.

Senke nad Balkanom | Shadows over the Balkans a.k.a. Black Sun (TV)

Andra “Tane” Tanasijević & Stanko Pletikosić

What is this canon: Serbian historical crime drama set in the interwar era. Loads of characters, the city of Belgrade and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia itself being almost characters in their own right, plot twists all over the place, people’s allegiances changing on a dime, murder mysteries, the drug trade, and the illicit pursuits of both rich and poor influencing the RL course of some major events. For comparison, think Babylon Berlin but, like, super Balkan. Two seasons so far, 10 episodes each, set in 1928 and 1934, respectively, with a third season currently in production, set to tackle the early days of World War II. The two leads are a fun variation on the old cop-young cop trop. Old cop is Andra Tanasijević (Tane), veteran homicide investigator, also veteran of World War I, (semi-)alcoholic, cynical, terminally unimpressed by everything and everyone (himself included), but still with a white knight streak he can’t seem to suppress even when it gets him in trouble. Young cop is Stanko Pletikosić, war orphan, trained abroad in forensic science, earnest, sometimes snarky, wet behind the ears but by mid-S1 he starts to get more streetwise without losing all of his idealism. Together They Fight Crime! Also get tangled up with all sorts of criminals, spies, government operatives, and shady dames, while they try to set the world and history straight.

The second season is available here, and the first one can be found, ahem, torrenting around.

All I want in fic for this canon is MORE. More canon-style shenanigans, more of that rich atmosphere, more historical detail, just MORE. Play with the canon however you like! Plot out a case fic! Embroil the two detectives in more historical goings-on, either before WWII, during it, or even after it! The show tends to reassert ontological inertia so historical events always fall into place as they did IRL – you can work with that, or go ahead and change the course of history (rather, have Tane and Stanko do it)! Have them interact and likely get in trouble with some of the other characters! (I am fond of the entire cast, especially Pršo, Stanko’s grandfather, all the Jatagan Mala folks, everyone who works at Glavnjača, the entire Macedonian mafia, all the historical characters – yes, all of them, even the really nasty pieces of work benefit from their actors’ commitment to the role. I would especially love for some of the supporting female characters – Mara, Mina, Violeta, Jana, Sonja – to get a chance to shine, or kick ass, or get their own revenge/heart’s desire, or even just fuck shit up and get in other characters’ way.) Or you could just have Tane and Stanko drown their troubles and shoot the shit in a tavern long past last call!

I would be happy for their dynamic to be what it was when they first met, all rubbing each other the wrong way and reading each other wrong (and sometimes right), or what it becomes later, when they’re a crack team even if they sometimes get on each other’s nerves big time. If you’re writing a case fic, feel free also to bring in Božidar Zečević, Stanko’s S2 partner, at least while he was along for the ride as a fellow investigator, before his role in the plot is revealed. I was very amused by his and Tane’s mutual animosity, very “the missus and the ex” over who gets to call Stanko his partner. (Also Zečević was totally in love with Stanko, come on!)

If you wanted to include some dialogue or phrases or hey write the whole fic in any dialect of what used to be called Serbo-Croatian, I’m here for that with bells on!

Canon-specific DNWs: Tane/Stanko; focus only on smut or ships (you can include the characters’ canon or invent non-canon ships, I just don’t want a fic only about those); anything above M rating for sex; soapboxing about Balkan history/conflicts/ethnic relations (the characters can clash about this, use stereotypes, etc. – I just don’t want the fic to be an excuse for the writer’s hot takes, ‘kay?)

Бeсa ǀ Besa (TV)

Petrit Koci

What is this canon: crime drama, one 12-episode season so far, produced in Serbia with dialogues in Serbian, Albanian, and English, and created by Tony Jordan of “Hustle” fame. Set in (and with a cast including actors from) several ex-Yugoslav states, the story follows three main characters: a Serbian family man and regular joe who accidentally kills the daughter of a major Kosovar Albanian crime boss in a car accident; said Albanian crime boss, who coerces his daughter’s unwitting killer to start working for him as an assassin; and a half-Albanian, half-Serbian Interpol agent who’s after the crime boss but starts investigating the regular joe turned assassin as well.

You can find it on Dailymotion if you search for “BeEp.0[episode number]”

The show has a twisty plot (with one plot hole I would love to get fix-it fic for, see below), gritty and handsome visuals, excellent performances, IMO is really good at depicting the various ethnicities and the complicated history behind the present-day events, and has a great through-line of deconstructing Balkan machismo and patriarchal culture. All three of the main characters have an image of themselves as MEN who Provide and/or Take Care of Business and Put Family First, each in their own way, and all three end up compromising on all their principles by season’s end. The women in the show’s ‘verse sometimes become collateral damage but also assert themselves in unexpected ways, which is great. The title refers to the Albanian (but more broadly, Balkan) cultural concept that one’s promise/vow/word of honor has to be kept and carried out no matter what, at peril of losing face, dishonoring both oneself and one’s family, even death. This gets deconstructed five ways from Sunday too, and it is awesome.

I’m requesting the Interpol agent because I find him to be the most fascinating. He is so committed to being the “good sheriff” and carrying out his professional duty regardless of whom he has to piss off along the way, but is also often quite ineffectual because the local police forces with which he has to cooperate tend to resent both his attitude and his ethnic background – not to mention that when everyone’s corrupt and compromised, the man who refuses to play the game makes lots of enemies. He’s also a real hard-ass who made a conscious choice long ago to have nothing in his life but his work, is a bit of a bastard, has a huge blind spot about gender which comes back to bite him, and ultimately is driven by a desire for personal vendetta more than an abstract commitment to justice (I love a character who is super focused on their goal and presents themselves as invulnerable, yet whose insecurities and traumas are always just beneath the surface of what drives them). And yes, by the end of the season he’s presented with a Faustian bargain and gets a huge target on his back. There’s a lot to unpack there!

I will eat up any local color you want to throw in. Ditto, the canon is super intense, but if you find a way to bring in some vintage Balkan pitch-black humor, I’m here for it. If you wanted to include some dialogue or phrases or hey write the whole fic in any dialect of what used to be called Serbo-Croatian, I’m here for that with bells on! Alas, I do not read Albanian, but if you want to include dialogue/phrases in it, go for it, so long as you tell me (in parentheses, in footnotes, whatever works) what’s going on.

Canon-specific DNW: soapboxing about Balkan history/conflicts/ethnic relations (the characters can clash about this, use stereotypes, etc. – I just don’t want the fic to be an excuse for the writer’s hot takes, ‘kay?)

Prompts:

-Any kind of casefic, either a divergence from S1, something pre- or post-canon, or a side investigation spinning off from the canon’s central plot. Anything that requires Koci to again traipse all over former Yugoslavia, butt heads with everyone, interrogate people, and do that soft-spoken “you don’t want to give me what I want but you’ll do it anyway” thing he does along the way. Maybe he gets a case that seems to have nothing to do with his pursuit of the Berisha clan, is annoyed by this (how dare his bosses expect him to work a case in which he’s not personally invested), but then surprise! There’s a connection between the cases.

-Something that requires Koci to use his knowledge of Albanian language and culture even more than in canon. I love how the canon depicts the existential discomfort of never fully fitting into – or being accepted by – either of the cultures/communities to which one has a connection, and how a person can become antagonistic and volatile as a result. Leaning into that would be wonderful.

-The Petrit Koci we meet at the start of the show has a solid façade of having no one, needing no one, wanting no one in his life. But what we learn about his background along the way (his police-chief father’s murder by the Berisha clan when he was a kid, the ex-fiancée whose family found him “a little too Albanian” for their taste) suggests that there was a lot of repeat heartbreak along the way, like he had to build his hard-ass persona one unpleasant life experience at a time. I would love something that explores his background in more depth – maybe a 5+1 fic, five times Koci let something get to him and one time he refused to care?

-Related to that: we learn a little about Koci’s father (whose murder when Koci was a child is his primary motivator), but we learn nothing about Koci’s mother other than that she’s ethnically Serbian. Is she still alive? What is/was their relationship like once they were alone and relocated from Prishtinë/Priština to Belgrade (in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, oh my)?

-Koci has devoted his whole life to bringing down the Berisha clan. He finally gets his wish. Now what the fuck does he do (with himself)?

-I was really struck by the one scene of Koci talking to Skënder Berisha – everything about the past history between the Koci and Berisha families, but especially Koci’s line that his late father didn’t believe in blood vendettas, but he (Koci) does. The end of the season implies he might go totally rogue, because if he can’t bring down the Berishas through the law, there are other ways. Tell me how this goes. In general, tell me your version of S2, there’s other stuff (ahem, spoilers) at the very end of S1 that suggests more trouble is coming down the pike.

-The one glaring plot hole which made me want to throw stuff is when Koci repeatedly dismisses one suspicious development as “oh that guy was lying because he’s cheating on his wife, nothing to see here.” I hate it when smart characters act dumb because the plot needs to keep going for however many more episodes. This does come back to bite Koci by season’s end, but I’d love to see it go a different way.

-Ship fic? Yes to ship fic! I would love either gen or ship fic for Koci paired with any of the following characters. Maybe the other character has to turn to Interpol for help/becomes a material witness/gets arrested/enters witness protection, or otherwise has to do teeth-clenched teamwork with Koci. If any of those dynamics turn porny, the antagonism and complicated dynamics and maybe a reluctant recognition that they’re not so different would perpetuate themselves in the porn too, and I’m here for it. (For this canon, I’m waiving my dubcon blanket DNW, but for M/F ships I want both to be motivated by anger/revenge/general existential bleakness instead of or as well as lust – so no M/f dubcon, please):

Uroš Perić – the regular joe turned assassin, who gets multiple chances in the course of the show to seek Koci’s help and doesn’t because he gets in deep and wants to be the guy that protects his family and takes care of everything himself. I keep thinking back to their very first scene, when Koci gives Perić his calling card and tells him to get in touch, and Perić could have done that before he committed his first murder but… didn’t. And then at the end, there’s that huge spoiler setting up S2. Despite becoming a murderer several times over, Perić is a much softer character than Koci, but he doesn’t like getting pushed around either. How would they work together, how would they clash?

Marija Perić – Uroš’s Croatian wife, who has the thankless role of being married to the guy who’s keeping her in the dark about major plot developments, but makes up for it with how she reacts to the hints she gets of Uroš’s continuing troubles as well as getting on Koci’s radar. She’s scared and out of her depth, but she’s also angry and antagonistic when she thinks Interpol is harassing her for no reason. I love the scene where Koci interrogates her and she won’t give him an inch even when he blindsides her with evidence of her husband’s activities – more of that kind of thing, please!

Dardan Berisha – the grieving crime boss and main target of Koci’s obsession (even though it was actually Dardan’s old uncle who had Koci’s father killed decades earlier). They’re both such hard, intense men, in part because they’ve had to be, and the narrative sets them up as mirror images of each other (while Uroš Perić is more a study in how someone becomes hard when circumstances push them to it). Yet while their conflict underpins the whole show, they rarely share a scene. Put them together more; let them fight or y’know *waggles eyebrows*.

Teuta Berisha – Dardan’s wife, who first loses her daughter, and by the end of the season her family is totally blown to smithereens, in part because of how she chooses to assert her agency within the super-patriarchal context in which she lives. She was ambivalent about her marriage before we meet her, and I love how canon events bring out her anger, grief, and quiet steeliness. Also, that moment at her daughter’s funeral when Koci gives her his condolences really hit me – they know they are enemies, but there’s that moment of standoffish respect between them. What if somehow they had to work together? A divergence from the end or any part of S1 would be very welcome.

Divna Dukić – Koci’s Interpol colleague and maybe the only character that likes him. Their dynamic is both very professionally respectful and yet… “flirtatious” may be too strong a word. They obviously have a little thing for each other but choose not to act on it for a whole mess of reasons (he’s an emotional disaster area, she has enough on her plate as a single mom with a shitty ex, they work together). Also, I have a theory that Divna, while seeming loyal, may take her marching orders from one of the criminal elements or maybe from the more corrupt parts of Interpol or the Serbian police. I would love any or all of that to get explored more.

While I do not want them shipped, the conversation at the hospital between Koci and Skënder Berisha is one of my favorite scenes, so if you want to throw those two together more as gen antagonists – yessssss, give it to me!

Oficir s ružom | The Officer with a Rose (1987)

Petar Horvat/Matilda Ivančić/Ljiljana Matić

What is this canon: Yugoslav movie set in Zagreb in 1945, right after the Partisan (communist resistance movement) victory in World War II. Matilda is a young widow whose husband was a little too close to the Croatian fascists and the Nazis, and she herself is too much of a rich bourgeois lady for the new regime’s liking. She runs afoul of Petar, a Partisan officer who threatens her with jail time and having her lavish apartment turned into communal housing – but in the end, Petar only moves his girlfriend Ljiljana into Matilda’s apartment and then starts hanging around more and more himself. Ljiljana is very young, naïve, and unworldly while also being a hardened soldier and true believer in the better future that communism would build, and she adores Petar and develops a very obvious girl-crush (or maybe just a crush) on Matilda, who is both bemused and reluctantly fond of Ljiljana. Matilda and Petar initially treat each other with anger and a kind of amused contempt, then they start to fall for each other. Uh oh – on both the personal and the political level.

You can find the movie floating around various sites with ex-Yu movies, it was/is on Dailymotion too.

I love how this movie is quite gentle with its characters while they deal with violent and horrific world events, how the narrative lets each of them fully embody their class, gender, and ideological self, plays up the conflicts and the barbed humor and the reluctantly-nascent commonalities between them for emotional payoff, and even when they’re happy (or think they are), the times in which they live just don’t allow for anything like a simple HEA. How to improve on canon? Clearly the movie should’ve gone the threesome route! I would love something set either in those early days, when Petar foisted Ljiljana on Matilda as a tenant and basically moved in himself, or a divergence so Ljiljana never leaves Zagreb and the ending isn’t such a complete bummer.

For early-days scenarios, gimme more of the merry war between Petar and Matilda, with Ljiljana’s crush on both of them stirring things up even more. Teasing and fighting and not wanting to admit they actually do get along, while enjoying breakfast for three. People walking in on each other in the shower. More of how, in the movie, Matilda’s apartment is an oasis from the massive changes happening outside, but the world keeps encroaching on the trio’s intimacy anyway. Maybe Petar and Ljiljana discover other elements of bourgeois living they start to enjoy, or they know they shouldn’t care when Matilda has to give some of her creature comforts away or trades them on the black market, but they mind anyway. Or, by painful fits and starts, Matilda adjusts to the new reality; maybe for some reason Matilda has to accompany the other two to the working-class neighborhood where Petar grew up or to Ljiljana’s village, or they bring her along/she gets sentenced to work on a public reconstruction project (radna akcija), and she hates it, but she has people on her side whether she’s ready to see it or not. If you want to write smut, I’m here for three-way sex, or for one of them to egg the other two on or spy on them so they can watch (oops they don’t end up just watching!), and/or for one or two of them to teach the other(s) something they haven’t done before or consider to be beneath them, and everyone enjoys it greatly. There’s great potential here for emotional manipulation and mind games, and I’m here for it.

For a canon divergence from the end, I don’t need a HEA – just don’t let people be dead and/or alone and inconsolable. The historical era was what it was, these characters are who they are (for one thing, Petar is strongly implied to participate in executions of political prisoners). I am good with as much historical detail as you want to throw in, and I’m good with an open-ended or bittersweet or even ominous ending, just so long as it’s not all unrelenting gloom and there is acknowledgment of the attachment between the trio.

If you wanted to include some dialogue or phrases or hey write the whole fic in any dialect of what used to be called Serbo-Croatian, I’m here for that with bells on!

Canon-specific DNW: Ljiljana’s canon pregnancy featuring in the fic; breaking up the threesome into just a series of twosomes in a smut scenario (I’m good with twosomes leading to some kind of three-way scenario, but not twosomes alone); soapboxing about Balkan history/conflicts/ethnic relations (the characters can clash about this, use stereotypes, etc. – I just don’t want the fic to be an excuse for the writer’s hot takes, ‘kay?)

#dear author letter #fandom growth exchange

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khrow-shinku · 3 years

Text

The Great War S22B

D&D 5e Campaign

The Great War

Aravari The Fresh Queen of Aeldari

The following events happened in the middle of session 22.

Uncle Visit 1st day

Ara visits her uncle as she has plenty of questions. She asks her uncle if her father was just paranoid his whole life or if something had changed because she was always taught by him that his old tribe was after him for abandoning the code and not being an assassin. Her uncle responded informing her that he wasn’t paranoid. Until her fifth birthday the tribe was after him, it wasn’t until then that leadership changed when their family ousted the old leaders. He could have come back at any time after that and rejoined the clan and been their blacksmith. Could have even brought his family with him. The clan had sent someone to inform him of all this however her father was so skilled at his ability to hide his tracks that by the time they found him he was buried. That is when he personally investigated his brother's death and found out about her, her stillborn brother and her mother and the life her father had made for himself.

Ara then notices a hole in all this, how did you see me at two if you didn’t know I existed until after my father died? He reaches into his pocket and hands her what appears to be a mirror with the domerian crest on it. She notices that it isn’t a normal mirror but a scrying mirror. He then responds I would see you in that when I would check on my younger brother although I wasn’t sure who you were until I started doing my investigation after his death. Since then I have used it to look after you and yes that dragonborn who killed those demons was because of me, that was actually your other uncle.

Ara then drops a bomb on him and tells him that her father is still alive and tells him about everything that happened in Dustreodan and her father transforming from a spider and being younger than he ever was as her father and appearing to be in his prime. Her uncle chuckles when he sees the embarrassment and sexual confusion at seeing her young father naked. She showed him the page with the coordinates and date. All he can see though is the coordinates nothing else appears on the paper for him. He agrees that all maps only show an ocean there however there are fairy tales of a magical island existing in that region too though no one has ever found it. Wanting to be prepared for her journey there she asked her uncle to send out some guys to go look into the area and any islands that may or may not be there.

The two of them begin discussing her parents in more detail as he had also done his detailed background checks and record keeping. Turns out Ara’s mother, Bekari, once banged a Terrasque named Bob.(Yes the one from earlier in the campaign). She also found out that the capital of her father’s country shared the same name as the name on the coordinates on the paper her father left for her. Uncle filled her in that it had mysteriously vanished one day leaving a crater and after that the country was sold and sold again which is why the clan now lives here in Aeldari for the most part and set up their organization to run out of here. He also had a feeling she would end up coming here eventually. He then went on to tell her that her father was originally posted in this country to run this branch and that is where he had first met her mother however as royalty she and him of course did not travel in the same circles. After her mother had left and given up her throne five to six years passed and then her father received a letter. After reading it he destroyed it and abandoned his post knowing it would cost him his life and cause his clan to hunt him down. After more discussion about things her uncle informs her that their deities would never revive him in such a way going so far as to make him younger. However it does sound like the work of a group of mages that had worshipped her mother. Turns out the year he left was the same year mom was dealing with that family in the burned down town she had found before. Ara informed her uncle of a theory she had come up with after comparing things that they both had found out. She believes her mother was killed by the dragolich because he saw her as a threat. A mother’s love is a powerful thing, he was likely afraid that she would come to save the son that had died and was now alive. Fearing this he had her killed. At least that is what Ara is thinking now anyway.

The conversation then shifts to the fact he has protected her and kept watch over her for years now, as has her father even after his death. Ara gave him a puzzled look. He went on to inform her that the dragonborn who killed those demons in front of her party and tested her before was her other uncle, who then appears out of the shadows and says hi. He then informs her that her working at the brothel was no accident. Her father had been in talks with Resnoa for years. He knew what she was and where her path would lead her. So he set up Resnoa’s brothel as a safe place for her to explore her true identity. Resnoa was one of their assassins, at that time she too appeared out of the shadows and said hi. Ara gave her a hug and had a brief convo and asked her to move the brothel with the girls here for obvious reasons, she was kind of queen and while she intends to uphold the deal she had with Resnoa she also has a country to run so she needs the brothel to be here. Ara then says she might know someone else who was a part of her fathers group and calls for Thefa to appear. Thefa, not knowing Ara knew how to do this yet, appears in the middle of the room naked in a bathtub. Thefa gets out of the tub. Ara's youngest uncle covered Thefa with his cloak. After which the bathtub teleported to the middle of a field where a farmer stood there confused. While talking with them she discovered that Thefa’s body is the secret treasury for the country. Inside her chest is a vault with all the money the country needs and uses to run. She had been saving it up slowly while traveling with Ara, she had been replacing Ara’s platinum with fake platinum and putting the real inside herself for their country.

Her uncle then brought out three boxes and told Ara to choose one. Ara asks him some questions trying to gauge what choice is the best choice. Only info he gives her is that this was a test everyone in his company has gone through including her father. After much thinking she remembered what her father had always told her, that the quality of material went wood, pearl, iron when she was growing up and never explained why. So she chose the iron box. In it was a stone written in abyssal that she couldn’t read so she put it back in the box and took it with her. After that they said their goodbyes and Ara left.

The Next Day with swordsmith Hashimoto

Ara was awakened early and escorted out before the sun had even risen. Outside of the castle she met Hashimoto who pointed at her and told her to come with him. She followed him to a building that turned out to be his forge. However there were tools there foreign to her despite growing up around her father who worked in a forge. They are magical tools that draw on the life force of the one who wields them. They were made by Bekari for her son to use when he took the throne. Ara was shocked by this and said son? She was pregnant before she gave up the throne? What happened to him? She left while still pregnant. The child was raised by its father because something had caused an issue with her. Knowing there is only one person who would know anything about her mom’s life at the time she called out Thefa’s name. She questioned Thefa about why her mother would start a new family and not go back to the son and baby daddy she already had. Thefa explained that she was a surrogate for a man and woman who couldn’t have children. That while yes it was technically another half brother to her it was the result of a signed contract to be raised by the man and his wife. A deal your mother made for certain resources she needed to flee. Ara’s grandmother had intended to steal Bekari’s life essence to regain her youth and maintain her control over the country. To avoid this Bekari handed over the country to the two men she did and left to the country of Criecia to birth the child per the contract and gain the resources she needed to run from her mother. Ara asks why would she run instead of simply killing her mother for being clearly evil or at least having ill intentions. Thefa explains that Ara’s mother was too weak to challenge her mother. She would never have won. Thefa informs Ara that her grandmother should be dead and in the mausoleum under the castle. The spectral butlers are relatives that her grandmother has leached life off of, none are former rulers. There are over a thousand of them there. The only reason the spectral people could leave the castle grounds is because Thefa did, they are bound to her as much as they are the castle. If Thefa wanted to she could summon them elsewhere however she prefers not to. Satisfied with things for now Ara tells Thefa she will ask her more about this later. Thefa leaves and Hashimoto says so are you ready to continue? Ara nods.

Hashimoto hands Ara the first tool and Ara feels like it bites her and then a stream of blood runs from her down the tool and becomes an ingot at the bottom. He then hands her the second tool and Ara begins to feel slightly weaker as a flame runs down the whole length of the tool with the largest portion of flame on the opposite end. Hashimoto asks her to calm down and control the flame. Even if she isn’t a pure succubus she should be able to turn it down a bit as it is too hot as it is a deep blue almost black flame. Hashimoto is constantly referring to her as “child” the whole time showing the age difference between the two. Hashimoto says I’m sorry if you can’t control your life force yet to control the flame most succubus can be much younger than you, had you been raised here you would be able to. Ara responds saying she was taught to control magical flame but controlling her life force is new for her. He explains to her that they are very similar and walks her through how to find her life force and gauge it and control it. After a while he has her controlling the flame and making it a midnight black and it is much hotter, so hot that even Ara can feel the heat a little. He walks Ara over to an anvil looking thing and she places the tool with the flame under the anvil and she places the ingot down on the anvil. The anvil itself starts to glow and the ingot seems to resonate with it and Hashimoto begins hammering and folding the ingot until he makes it into an unsharpened blade nearly as long as Ara’s body. After doing over 2000 folds he tells her to lift the blade off the anvil before removing the flame she does so however she is exhausted as it has been her life force sustaining this flame for the hours and hours it has taken to do this. He has her lower the blade in a horse trough of water. He takes the flame bearers tool from her and puts it on his bench then takes the metal bearers tool from her and has her sit down. After he tells her that her part in the process is done. It will take its final form as he continues his part in the process. He also tells her she will see it before her coronation takes place and then has guard carry Ara where she needs to go, which is to give her speech to her people at the colosseum.

The next day Ara visits her uncle again.

Ara goes to continue talking to her uncle about things and finds out that there are other locations involved in the things that are going on other than Lunarias and Gaia. Ara sees Seerii and says hi to her as she goes through her uncle’s office and out a door she didn’t notice in it before. After a little bit of talking Ara goes to leave her uncle and let him get on with his work. Before leaving he tells her to see the receptionist that he has left a gift there for her. At the receptionist she is given a bag with her and Angra’s names on it.

#d&d #dnd #d&d5e #the great war #homebrew #campaign #session22b #aravari's adventures 2

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cullywullycurlywurly · 8 years

Text

“No.”

“But Cullen, see here-“

“Did I stutter?”

“Anyone would think you didn’t want to share them.”

“Not with the nobility of Orlais, I do not.”

“I think you are being rash. This is an excellent reason for a peaceful, joyful gathering, as well as winning ourselves some influence with the nobility. Recently, things have been tricky to say the least. An evening reception could be the turning point for this.”

“They are not bargaining chips.”

“But they attract much attention-”

“So?”

“The children of the Herald of Andraste and the Commander of the Inquisition. Surely you understand the interest that garners; the people are curious.”

“They can stay curious, and preferably several miles away from Skyhold.”

Josephine let out an indignant huff, pointing her quill at him from across the war table. “You are being insufferable, and pig-headedly stubborn about this.”

“Good.”

“Cullen, it will be a fine evening!”

“They are children! One of them barely an infant, three months old!” Cullen’s lip curled as he snarled his response. “They will have no idea what is happening, other than being peered at and patted and prodded, on display for your politicking. I won’t agree to it.” He folded his arms firmly, glowering across the room at her, fully intending that the conversation be over.

“That’s a pity, because the Inquisitor already has.”

“What?!”

——

“I’d like to voice, once again, that I am entirely against this entire idea. Maker knows why you ever agreed to it.” Cullen’s scowl was fixed as the procession of caravans and trailers made their way into the courtyard of Skyhold, mingling with the welcoming party, the sounds of laughter and conversation rising in the air. Their daughter sat in his arms, young eyes watching the arriving banners and colours with fascination from the safety of the parapets.

“Is that why we have more guard on duty than the entirety of Val Royeaux?”

The displeasure on his face was evident. “Inviting half of Orlais in to our home, even just for the evening, is asking for trouble. Andraste preserve me, I will have lost my patience by the time the end of this debacle comes around.”

Elicia rolled her eyes, moving to stand at his side, gently leaning into him. The infant tucked in the crook of her arm squeaked at the movement, but continued to slumber on. “Cullen, love. You are overthinking this.”

She felt the soft scratch of stubble as he kissed the side of her head, free arm linking around her waist, pulling her in close, chest heaving with a sigh. “It makes me nervous.” The stark confession came as his previous stoicism slipped. “It is too easy, too open and exposed. It is bad enough having to agree to place you on a pedestal for all to see, to leave you so exposed, that I cannot control. But for them too…I know I cannot hide them here forever, but…To wish for some normality for them, to be safe in this uneasy world…”

“I cannot think of any way they will ever be safer. Skyhold is their home.” She let the silence hang for a moment before continuing. “We need to appease these families and win some favour for ourselves. I know you understand it well enough, and I know that underneath you distain for our ambassador’s posturing, you recognise the reality we face. This is difficult, but our duty to the Inquisition must also be a consideration. It is one evening.”

The sigh that began his reply told her he understood fine well. “They will be safe, because I have stationed guards at every possible problematic area within Skyhold, and will have all on high alert for any issues. I will not allow anything other than a trouble-free evening.”

“They will be safe,” Elicia countered, turning her gaze upwards to meet his, “because their father will be less than a breath away at all times. No would-be trouble maker would dare to do anything with that particular threat hanging over them.”

She allowed herself a coy grin as she felt his chest rise and fill with pride, the low chuckle that fell from his lips more relaxed. “At least we are in agreement about something.”

Any further response he had was interrupted by an excited cry from the toddler in his arms.

“Daddy, look! Flags!” ——

As it happened, the reception was undisturbed and typically boring. The nobles fawned over the new arrival (yes, he repeatedly answered, he had taken his eyes and hair from his father), whispered hushed remarks about the blessed second infant of the Herald (Connor, he did have a name, sweet Maker!) and marvelled at how alike their young girl was to her mother (Maker’s breath, was that really a surprise?). Frankly, the events of the day did little to change his opinion on the uselessness of pomp and circumstance of nobility, and only further served to reinforce his belief that a few good soldiers was better than any damn party. He was polite, however, Josephine’s warning eyes often finding him, and he spent the early evening fielding questions with ease, and sheltering a shy Imogen in his arms from the squealing noble women attempting to pinch her cheeks.

But when she began to whine, and rub at her eyes, and the baby grew restless, even with a full stomach, Cullen merrily volunteered to commandeer the bed time effort. Elicia had thanked him as she had passed the boy, the look they shared telling him there would be an admittance later on that perhaps he had been right about inviting so many people at once. But it was gone in a flash, and she was drawn into another conversation with another masked noble. Cullen slipped from the Great Hall with ease, leaving instructions with the guard should his presence be required, before disappearing into the quiet of Skyhold and the safety of their personal quarters, the warmth of the embers from the fire glowing in the dark of the evening.

As the door closed, he felt the invisible burden slip from him. Complete. He could relax, now that privacy was once more theirs, that the peering eyes and sickly-sweet voices had disappeared. Elicia was capable, more than capable, of handling an evening reception full of finery and indulgence. She was, after all, noble blooded, born into that world, far more attune with it and less noticeably irritated; Cullen, despite valiant attempt, had yet to ever find the patience, and often fought to control the sarcasm that awaited on his tongue. For all that the Inquisition was, and had, the Ferelden farm boy at his core still yearned for the most peaceful life he could muster.

He kicked off the leather boots that so pained his feet, setting the baby down amongst the covers on the bed before shedding the heavy dress jacket and waistcoat, and loosing the collar of his shirt. He set about changing Imogen from the ridiculously ruffled dress she had been subjected to, cladding her in fresh nightclothes and freeing her ever-growing hair from the confines of the plait Elicia had so carefully put in place.

“Come now, how about some peace from all that madness, hm? You have done a fine job as our newest ambassador. You look a little more like yourself now though, little one, and I fear I shall always prefer you to do so.” The soft giggle from her as he tickled under her chin made his heart swell, and he planted several kisses on her cheeks, peals of light laughter ringing out in response. Bundling both her and her brother back into his arms, he settled amongst the pillows on the bed, Imogen curling under one arm, the baby, with his golden tufts and rosy fat cheeks, nuzzling into his chest, breathing settling as calm descended. Cullen’s eyes closed almost automatically, the peaceful bliss addictive, and the content feeling of having both close, safe and quiet.

“So little, so new here, but so loved. Endless possibility, wrapped with hopes and dreams. Must protect, too innocent, too much evil in this world for them. How such little people have such hold over a heart.”

The sudden voice made him jump, eyes snapping open; even now, the Hedge mage could catch him by surprise. “Cole.” It was a rather obvious statement, and the boy, perched on the chair opposite, tilted his head.

“I was not aware you were sleeping. Did I frighten you?”

“I wasn’t, I…never mind.” He sighed, raising an eyebrow. “What do you want?”

“The Inquisitor asked me to check you had escaped in safety. She is trapped within conversation, mask after mask, words, words, words. It is so busy, but nobody notices Cole. I slipped up here very easily for her. She was worried it was too much.”

“Did she now?” He relaxed, returning to gently patting his son’s back, lulling him into a peaceful slumber with the quietest of sniffles. “Well, you can tell her that all is well, and she is free to continue with her evening. Although, I doubt I will be rejoining her, so please pass on my apologies.”

“Warm arms, broad chest, hands that guide, eyes that adore. Safe from all here, with my father, my favourite place in his embrace.”

Cullen’s eyes snapped up once more, following Cole’s gaze to his sleeping daughter, a dainty hand curled amongst his shirt, dark curls splayed as she found sleep, peace on her face, cheek resting at the arch of his shoulder. The creeping familiarity of fierce love wove into his chest as he watched her sleep, Cole’s words ringing in his ear, and a soft chuckle escaped him as he closed his eyes, knowing the spirit would be gone, leaving them in blissful peace once more.

#da:i #dad cullen #da:i fanfic #shameless papacullen loving #cullen rutherford #inquisitor x cullen #cullen #papacullen #cullywullycurlywurly

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